I think you should port Lucene to MS-DOS... If your app can't move beyond MS-DOS, then you stick with version 1.9 (or 2.0 in this case).
If you can't innovate and move forward, you die. Java has a GREAT history of supporting prior versions. At some point though you need to be able to move forward since developers may not be trained in the "legacy" environment. -----Original Message----- From: markharw00d [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, June 16, 2006 6:34 PM To: java-dev@lucene.apache.org Subject: Re: Results (Re: Survey: Lucene and Java 1.4 vs. 1.5) >1.5 IS the Java version that the majority Lucene users use, not 1.4! >Does this mean we can now start accepting 1.5 code? This isn't simply about which JVM gets used the most wins. This is about "how many Lucene users will we inconvenience or lose by moving to 1.5?" Right now the survey sample tells me roughly a third which doesn't seem like a good thing. Maybe the question is more usefully "who can't/won't move to 1.5 in the immediate future?" I believe we shouldn't select the minimum platform based on the coding convenience it may offer us which seems to be the major objective behind 1.5 adoption. When developing a library deployed in many applications/environments over which you have no control and where careful consideration of runtime performance not coding convenience/speed of development is the primary concern my preference would be to choose 1.4. Not all deployment environments can be upgraded easily. Take my current application at work. It's applet-based and rolled out to hundreds of corporate desktops which are stuck on 1.4 (this won't change anytime soon). Lucene isn't on the client but all client and server code in the app has been written in 1.4 to avoid any issues of any 1.5 code leaking onto the 1.4 client. All of the many 3rd party libraries in use (Spring, database drivers etc) are 1.4 compatible in their latest versions. I'd like to stick with the latest Lucene codebase but mandating 1.5 for Lucene would introduce a code management headache to this app with the mixed JVMs Unless there are *really* good runtime benefits that are solely based on 1.5 libraries or source code I would prefer to see Lucene stick with 1.4 as a base rather than limit Lucene's deployment options simply because of code-time benefits the new 1.5 syntax offers. I see that the Spring framework recognise this dilemma and still seek to support as far back as 1.3 (see http://www.springframework.org/node/220). Simon said "everyone should download 1.5". It's nice to think you can accelerate the global adoption of 1.5 by changing projects like Lucene but the reality is corporates do not change platforms overnight because of such a change. That's a long-winded way of saying "-1" unless I hear of any arguments which are based on something much more substantial than "1.5 makes coding easier". Cheers, Mark ___________________________________________________________ The all-new Yahoo! Mail goes wherever you go - free your email address from your Internet provider. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
