[Biojava-l] RE: Re: JDK1.4 and IDE's

[Thomas Down]

On Tue, Jun 05, 2001 at 06:18:51AM -0700, Arnon Klein wrote:
> 
> And yes - switching to JDK1.4 at this time will be a mistake. JDK1.4 is at present - "write once, debug on Solaris/Windows only."
> Seems to me that alot of people who also use linux boxes, or Irix (I know at least one...) No JDK1.4 for them. Come back - one year.

Erm, Sun have been supporting Linux fairly well for a while
now -- basically since the 1.3.0 release.  1.4.0beta appeared
simultaneously for Linux, Windows, and Solaris.  I think this
is their policy for all releases, now.

But yes, we need to wait for a few other platforms to catch
up.  I rely quite heavily on Tru64 at work, and I know that's
quite common in the field.  Compaq are normally /reasonably/
quick about Java upgrades, but probably not for a few months
yet.  MacOS X gets mentioned too, now.  I'd guess Apple will work
quite hard to get 1.4 ported, but again, still some time off.

Irix I know much less about.  Last I looked, Java support
there was quite weak, but I've heard a few people saying it
was improving.

Certainly, we shouldn't rely of 1.4 features until:

  a) All the vendors who are making at least /some/ effort
     to support Java have had a chance to catch up.

  b) We actually have a compelling need to use one of the
     new features in the core.

This isn't going to happen for a while, guys (although I
think switching back to JAXP1.1 XML support should be tackled
in the not-too-distant future).  I'd still encourage people t
upgrade to 1.4, because of the performance enhancements.

If we get to the point where most/all core developers are
using 1.4, we should make sure we still build on 1.3 reasonably
regularly for testing purposes.

Of course, deciding when to start using the JSR014 generic
types is going to be even harder *sigh*.


       Thomas.