[Biojava-dev] [Biojava-l] Increasing Java version requirement for BioJava

[Spencer Bliven]

Good information, Jose. If Ubuntu is switching to Java 8 in April then I
think that seals the deal for using 8 for all development after the
February release.

I still don't see the point of dictating Java 7 for the 4.2 release, but it
does sound like it will impact relatively few users.

Cheers,
-Spencer

On Wed, Jan 13, 2016 at 11:17 PM, Jose Duarte <jose.duarte at rcsb.org> wrote:

> The lack of a Java 8 package in the standard repositories for Ubuntu
> 14.04LTS is definitely a big argument against 1.8. Andreas plan of doing
> 1.7 for next release and 1.8 for the one after sounds like a great
> compromise. The next Ubuntu LTS will come in April with Java 8 packages, so
> that will be a good timing for our move to 1.8 in the over-next release.
>
> Jose
>
> On Wed, Jan 13, 2016 at 10:45 AM, Jan Stourac <xstourac at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> We are using Java 8 (because it is requirement of one library) in almost
>> all our projects, so I am fine with both 7 and 8.
>>
>> But even though I agree with the plan of upgrading, I would like also to
>> note the importance of checking java/openjdk packages available in the
>> repositories of popular distros... For example Debian 8 (current stable) or
>> Ubuntu 14.04 LTS still do not have Java 8 in standard repositories and it's
>> a hard question what is better version to force - Java 7 with no updates
>> from Oracle (but I think that RedHat still take care of OpenJDK 7) or Java
>> 8 with lack of support from some disto maintainers?
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Jan.
>>
>>
>> On 01/12/2016 01:16 PM, Spencer Bliven 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
>> <http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/eol-135779.html>*
>> - 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
>> <https://plumbr.eu/blog/java/java-version-statistics-2015-edition>
>> version currently
>> + Some minor language features added
>> - No updates since Apr 2015
>> <http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/eol-135779.html>*
>>
>> 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
>> <https://github.com/biojava/biojava/issues/364#issuecomment-170710242>
>> 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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