Thilo Goetz wrote:
Hi all,
I'm wondering if it's time to move to Java 1.5 after this
release. While there are still people out there who use
Java 1.4, their numbers are shrinking rapidly. I'm guessing
that by the time we do our next release, the need for
Java 1.4 compatibility will have gone.
I can see three possible courses we could take:
1) Leave things as they are, keep all of the UIMA Java
distribution 1.4 compatible. We should do this if we have
reason to believe that demand for 1.4 compatibility will
continue for some time to come.
2) Keep the core jars 1.4 compatible, but allow 1.5 constructs
in our tools. I'm saying this because I was thinking of
doing some improvements to CVD where I might want to use 1.5.
However, I don't like this approach myself as it complicates
our build process.
3) Allow Java 1.5 constructs everywhere (and change our build
accordingly). If the developers are all agreed to do this,
we should also check what the folks on uima-user think.
Let me know what you think.
In general, I think users are very slow to move. However, in this case
I think we can
move to 1.5, due to the following:
1) Users needing 1.4 can use release 2.2. If users are slow to adopt
1.5, they might also
be slow to adopt UIMA 2.3 for similar reasons.
2) At least one big conservative computer company with a history of slow
migration also seems to
have moved to 1.5 for new releases ;-)
I do note that Eclipse has not moved, though (you can run Eclipse on a
1.4 engine;
see http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/moreinfo/jre.php
Eclipse has some arguments for staying with 1.4 compatibility, but some
things in Eclipse
are starting to require 1.5 (e.g., the bridge that allows running AWT
and Swing inside SWT
on some platforms requires 1.5, and the Eclipse J2EE IDE features
require 1.5).
But I'm also strongly in favor of posting to the uima-users list to see
if there are any objections.
-Marshall
