Hi,
Based on HBase community's decision to EOL branch-1 after 1.7.0 release as
per the discussion thread [1], it is inevitable that we will also have to
consider EOL of 4.x release line sometime soon.
As we have discussed in the past, even though Phoenix 4.x should support
Java 7 only (as it supports HBase 1), we are not strictly following this
compatibility. With HBase 2 / Phoenix 5, we no longer have to worry about
this source compatibility. Tephra also continues to support HBase 1 and
hence should follow Java 7 source compatibility rules and yet I see many
Java 8 Optional imports in tephra-hbase-compat-2.x modules. Source
compatibility is just one of the reasons behind HBase community's decision
to EOL branch-1, many other important reasons are discussed over thread [1].
Overall, HBase 2 is already widely adopted and deployed in production and
so should be Phoenix 5 IMHO.
Given that there are no apparent functional differences b/ 4.16 and 5.1(and
master) except for maybe few pending forward-ports (if any), I believe it
is worth considering the ongoing 4.16 patch release as the last one on 4.x
release line and EOL 4.16 and 4.x.
Thoughts?
1. https://s.apache.org/rs2bk
