I agree with Russ. If we require Java 8, rather than just allowing it, we'll cause many users to stop upgrading their Jenkins installations, and will tend to lose their involvement in the project.
I appreciate developer benefits very much, but with 80 000+ installations, I think preserving compatibility is more valuable than the developer benefits of requiring Java 8. I admit that I was just hit by exactly this condition as a developer. I added a new test to the git client plugin which depended on a Java 7 NIO feature. It failed to compile in my test configuration with Java 6. Even so, I still think that the most we should require is Java 7. Is there a way to count the summarize the distribution of virtual machines used with Jenkins today, similar to the summary posted earlier about platforms used with Jenkins? Are there ways we could allow more of the benefits of Java 8 development, while still retaining compatibility? Mark Waite On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 4:48 PM, Russ Tremain <[email protected]> wrote: > +1 > > I think it is fine to "allow java 8" but not require it. > > Requiring the latest version of java to run Jenkins just means that many > shops will stop upgrading Jenkins. > > Compared to whatever new esoteric language features JDK8 has, stability of > the Jenkins production platform concerns far outweigh convenience or > curiosity concerns for Jenkins developers. > > To put it graphically: > > Production platform stability: whale > Jenkins developer convenience: anchovy > > So that's my vote. ;) > > At 12:23 PM -0700 9/24/14, Kohsuke Kawaguchi wrote: > > I think we need to ask this to the users list and what people say. I'm > happy to pose this question in JUC Bay Area to get the feel, too. > > > As much as I love the idea as a developer, this does have a significant > negative impact on the users. > > > For one, we aren't just talking about optionally taking advantages of > Java8 library features, like we do today for Java7. Here you are proposing > to compile version 52 class files that only Java8 understands. > > > It is also not just so called esoteric OSes that do not have Java8. Take > Ubuntu for example. The current latest release 14.04 still doesn't have > Java8 as a native package > <http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?suite=trusty-updates&searchon=names&keywords=openjdk>. > IIUC you currently have to rely on installing it from somebody's private > repository (and I have no way of trusting these guys.) This means our DEB > package will not be installable on its own. > > > Here's another one. IBM still hasn't released JDK8. If you are an IBM shop > and need to use IBM JDK for support contracts, you'll be left behind. > > > I'd be happy to be proven wrong, but I don't think JDK8 dependency will be > happening any time soon. > > > 2014-09-24 11:50 GMT-07:00 Daniel Beck <[email protected]>: > > > On 24.09.2014, at 19:53, oliver gondÏa <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Do we have stats for connected slaves? I expect there is significantly > more instances that are using exotic platforms to power some of their > slaves but not master. > > Since only relatively few Jenkins installs actually seem to use slaves, > that's not the case. > > Out of ~27300 slaves, only ~200 are known to run any of the platforms > mentioned above. Unfortunately, we don't know the OS of ~6500 slaves and I > don't see why this should be the case. > > (Of course, one could argue that the more likely an organization is to > have lots of nodes and use obscure commercial Unixes, the less likely it is > they participate in anonymous usage statistics -- but that makes it their > problem IMO.) > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Jenkins Developers" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > > > > > -- > Kohsuke Kawaguchi > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Jenkins Developers" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Jenkins Developers" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- Thanks! Mark Waite -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Jenkins Developers" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
