Hi Michael, Both approaches you have suggested are excellent. However I feel that option 1 (having a seprate Java5 branch) is cleaner and simpler. (That is the idea I thought of first, so I could be biased) With that approach we would be shipping a smaller code base. Java 5 folks get only Java 5 code and the users on Java 1.3 get only Java 1.3 code. Also with the second approach won't our build/compilation process gets more complex?
Thanks, Hiranya On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 5:22 AM, Michael Glavassevich <[email protected]>wrote: > Hi Hiranya, > > Hiranya Jayathilaka <[email protected]> wrote on 05/06/2009 08:16:52 > AM: > > > Hi Michael, > > > > Just a little idea that came to mind (I'm not sure whether even if > > it is possible). Can we branch out from the trunk and maintain a > > Java5 version of Xerces in a different branch? We can do Xerces > > releases for Java 5, based on the branch and when the community is > > ready to migrate to Java 5 all we have to do is merge the branch to > > the trunk. Until we do that people who are already on Java 5 can use > > our Java5 version of Xerces. > > > > It is probably more work to us. But I think given the benefits of > > moving to Java 5, I think it's worth it. WDYT? > > How much work it might be would somewhat depend on the kind of changes that > are being made on the branch. For example, mechanical changes like > StringBuffer -> StringBuilder, new Integer() -> Integer.valueOf() would help > improve performance and should be fairly easy to maintain. Others like usage > of generics, for each loops, varargs and other Java 5 syntactic sugar in the > internals really only benefits Xerces developers (i.e. us) except that it > might make it much harder to apply patches between branches. > > Keeping the trunk and the xml-schema-1.1-dev branches in synch hasn't been > too bad, so perhaps maintaining one for Java 5 might not have quite that > much more overhead. > > Alternatively we could create classes that are smart enough to use Java 5 > capability if its available. For example: > > public abstract class Util { > public static Util getUtil() { > // returns Util_13 or Util_15 depending on the JDK level > } > public abstract Integer valueOf(int i); > } > > public class Util_13 extends Util { > public Integer valueOf(int i) { > return new Integer(i); > } > } > > public class Util_15 extends Util { > public Integer valueOf(int i) { > return new Integer.valueOf(i); > } > } > > which would work for users on earlier JDKs but do better things on Java 5 > and above. Then I think the Java 1.3 and 5 versions could co-exist on the > trunk and we could have one unified release including both. Hopefully less > work for us and users get the benefit of Java 5 improvements. > > We did something similar early on (i.e. SecuritySupport vs. > SecuritySupport12) when we were still supporting JDK 1.1 to take advantage > of Java 1.2's security framework. > > > > Thanks, > > Hiranya > > > On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 5:21 PM, Michael Glavassevich < > [email protected] > > > wrote: > > Hi Hiranya, > > > > The discussion branched out on to several mailing lists [1]. Plus I > > got a few private e-mails. There are still users and projects which > > depend on Xerces that are still stuck on earlier JDKs (including 1. > > 3) so we only voted to drop support for Java 1.2 right now. So based > > on that feedback (from November of last year) I think it's still too > > early for us to make the move to Java 5. Perhaps we can ask the > > question to the community again after we've had a release or two > > with Java 1.3 being the minimum. > > > > Thanks. > > > > [1] http://markmail.org/search/?q=%22Dropping%20JDK%201.2%20support% > > 20for%20Xerces-J%22#query:%22Dropping%20JDK%201.2%20support%20for% > > 20Xerces-J%22%20order%3Adate-backward+page:1+state:facets > > > > Michael Glavassevich > > XML Parser Development > > IBM Toronto Lab > > E-mail: [email protected] > > E-mail: [email protected] > > > > Hiranya Jayathilaka <[email protected]> wrote on 05/06/2009 05:56:54 > AM: > > > > > > > Hi Folks, > > > > > > I would like to know the team's view on migrating to Java 5. I > > > remember this subject being discussed in the mailing list a several > > > months back and we did receive some encouraging comments from the > > > communit too [1]. But the things have gone pretty quiet ever since. > > > > > > Thanks, > > > -- > > > Hiranya Jayathilaka > > > E-mail: [email protected]; Mobile: +94 77 633 3491 > > > Blog: http://techfeast-hiranya.blogspot.com > > > > > > [1] - http://xerces-j-dev.markmail.org/message/2lw4gnijzmno5e4l > > > > -- > > Hiranya Jayathilaka > > E-mail: [email protected]; Mobile: +94 77 633 3491 > > Blog: http://techfeast-hiranya.blogspot.com > > Thanks. > > Michael Glavassevich > XML Parser Development > IBM Toronto Lab > E-mail: [email protected] > E-mail: [email protected] > -- Hiranya Jayathilaka Software Engineer; WSO2 Inc.; http://wso2.org E-mail: [email protected]; Mobile: +94 77 633 3491 Blog: http://techfeast-hiranya.blogspot.com
