There's a similar discussion happening in Maven development. Some interesting points of view being expressed there:
1) Java 6 is pretty "uninteresting" as a change from 5; some people thought it wasn't enough of an improvement to warrant the change. They suggested either not moving, or moving to Java 7. (Java 8 has some really nice features --- but it's not out till next year...) 2) Others pointed out that many "government" users are still on Java 1.2 or 1.4 - they're very slow to upgrade. The rebuttal to this was - that would be fine, since they would not have upgraded their Maven, either, and the old levels work on the older Java versions. Food for thought... -Marshall On 7/28/2013 10:05 AM, Marshall Schor wrote: > Dear Users, > > The UIMA developers would like to be able to start using Java 6 language > features; of course this would require users to be running this level or > later. > > Currently, we require only Java 5 or later. > > Java 5 from various vendors is either past end-of-life or approaching it > (meaning no updates, unless you have some special contracts). > > See http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/eol-135779.html or > http://www.ibm.com/software/support/lifecycle/ > > If we started requiring Java 6 or later, would this be an issue for you? > > -Marshall Schor >
