On Jun 5, 2008, at 19:26, Andreas Delmelle wrote:
On Jun 5, 2008, at 17:46, Vincent Hennebert wrote:
Hi Guys,
I would like to raise this topic again: what about switching to
Java 1.5
as a minimum requirement?
No objection from me. +1 on moving forward with this in the trunk.
Just to clarify my maybe overly enthusiastic response a bit:
I'm under the impression that, with the mentioned backporting tools,
even if we start using 1.5 features in the source, we can still quite
easily deliver binaries that run on 1.4.
As Jeremias mentioned, experiments with these tools should probably
best be done in a separate branch for now, until we're sure that
everything works as expected.
OTOH, holding off too long on using 1.5 features, simply to be able
to /compile/ FOP on 1.4 without any backporting, is a bit too
cautious for my taste. I think we would mainly be holding ourselves
back. It would be an entirely different matter if it was all-or-
nothing...
So my vote would still remain a +1 to move forward with this.
Actually, Vincent's initial question is somewhat misleading. It does
not seem a matter of having 1.5 as a minimum requirement. It's only
on the level of the source that we would gradually move toward 1.5.
For users of the binaries, nothing would change. They would still get
their 1.4 compatible distribution. It's not as if we're dropping
support for 1.4 entirely. Only those that want to play with the
source code themselves and recompile will need access to a 1.5 JDK.
In case we launch another user-poll, a question could also be added
to check the positions on this matter:
"If the FOP-team were to decide to move forward to 1.5 for the
source, but still distribute 1.4 binaries would that:
a) keep you from using FOP? (most likely not)
b) keep you from playing with the source code and contribute to
FOP? (possibly, but far from certain)"
Cheers
Andreas
