Thanks for the feedback. This is the kind of data that I was looking for. Yes, I do realize that for some users upgrading isn't a simple process.
In your environment, do you have any roadmap for upgrading to WAS 7.0 and onward? If you have a large number of app servers and EOS date is Sep 30th 2013, it sounds more likely that you'll be rolling out a newer version pretty soon?
If your WAS servers will be upgraded within a year, you'll be able to catch up with the latest version of Jenkins again by then, so it might not be the end of the world.
(I have to say this EOS time table of WAS [1] actually made me more comfortable requiring Java6 --- IBM products are probably among the longest in terms of the support window, and even with that, there will be no Java5-based WAS supported by IBM in a year.)
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_WebSphere_Application_Server#Version_history
On 10/07/2012 07:43 PM, Chris Graham wrote:
Hello Kohsuke. I'm having real troubles with my nabble account so I can not post this there, please feel free to repost. Regarding the discussions around upgrading to a minimum of Java 1.6. Whilst I understand the desire for developers to play with something shiny and new, I do find that the current 1.5 based Jenkins is more than sufficient for our needs. I lot of responses about the upgrade are normally around the "just upgrade the java" (assuming that I am running under tomcat of similar [if only it was so simple as that!]). I am running Jenkins inside of WebSphere on AIX. I am currently hosting Jenkins under WAS 6.1 on AIX 5.3. Whilst AIX 5.3 is nearing (or may have reached it's EOS), WAS 6.1's EOS dates have *just been extended* by a year! Additionally, although the Sun/Oracle Java 1.5 may have been EOS'd quite a while ago, the IBM Java 1.5/5 is most definately not EOS. Please see: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/jdk/lifecycle/index.html. Running on AIX, we have one choice in JDK: IBM. The IBM 1.5/5 EOS is Sept 2015! The reality is that we have lots of WebSphere servers running in large data centres. So simply stating "just upgrade java" (assuming that it is running under Tomcat or similar) is simply not an option for us. Whilst I do realise that very (1.5% by your figures) few of us still run on 1.5, some of us will simply not be able to upgrade to a newer version of WAS/JDK as a simple task. It's not as easy as clicking your fingers. I also do wonder how many installations are in said data centres and are unable to report their presence. So I do believe that the 1.5% figure would be low, but certainly within an order of magnitude. So, please do not cut us off from future updates. Thanks for your time. -Chris Chris Graham AIX, WAS, SCM, Build and Release SME
-- Kohsuke Kawaguchi http://kohsuke.org/
