[Biojava-dev] Increasing Java version requirement for BioJava

[Terry Casstevens]

Dear Spencer,

I'm the lead developer for the Tassel software, and we use the Biojava
libraries.  We've required Java 8 for Tassel since August 2014.  If
you change, some users will need to upgrade Java regardless.  I
recommend going to Java 8.

maizegenetics.net/tassel

Best,

Terry


On Tue, Jan 12, 2016 at 7:16 AM, Spencer Bliven
<spencer.bliven at gmail.com> wrote:
> There has been some informal discussion of increasing the Java version
> requirement for BioJava from the current Java 6 to either 7 or 8. It would
> be great to hear from the larger BioJava community about whether this would
> be a welcome change or not.
>
> I will start the discussion by listing what I see as the pros and cons of
> setting each version as the minimum requirement for BioJava.
>
> Java 6:
> ---------
> + Greatest backwards compatibility
> - No updates since Feb 2013*
> - Some dependencies are not compatible, requiring the use of older versions
> (currently only log4j, but could be others in the future)
>
> Java 7:
> ---------
> + Most popular version currently
> + Some minor language features added
> - No updates since Apr 2015*
>
> Java 8:
> ---------
> + Tons of awesome new programming features, e.g. lambda functions
> + Only version supported by Oracle
> - Not available for many systems
>
> * Note that all versions are backwards compatible, so you can always use a
> more up-to-date JDK for downstream projects. Running outdated software is
> generally a bad idea, so users are encouraged to use the Java 8 JRE,
> regardless of the minimum BioJava requirement.
>
>
> One thing I would like to get a sense of is how many BioJava users are still
> using 6 and 7. @emckee2006 mentioned on github that they still have some
> servers on 6. I know that getting Java 8 installed on CentOS is rather
> painful, so probably some users haven't yet updated to 8.
>
> Let me know if I missed anything!
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> Spencer
>
>
>
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