Re: Cocoon-jms-sample requires Java >= 1.5

[Grzegorz Kossakowski <gr...@tuffmail.com>]

Peter Hunsberger pisze:
>     But when switching the version why don't switch to 1.6 (I think it's
>     on MacOSX now also available). Otherwise we have to switch again in
>     1 year or so (see
>     http://java.sun.com/products/archive/eol.policy.html). EOL for 1.5
>     is  October 2009.
> 
>         WDYT?
> 
> 
> 
> There might be people who can't run 1.6 yet.  In particular we know some 
> people are still stuck on old versions of Websphere and similar.  We've 
> had this discussion before and I'm on the side that we can't support 
> legacy code forever.  However, I do feel that a jump to 1.6 might be a 
> bit premature. We just had this discussion internally over the last 
> couple of weeks and we found several 1.6 incompatibilities forcing us to 
> stay on 1.5 for the moment.  If we do have a need to move to 1.6 in the 
> future it shouldn't be that much of an issue to change at that point?


Technically, switching to new Java version is not that hard, things that you need to do are:
1. Change required Java version in our parent pom.
2. Change profile in Continuum so it uses Java 1.5
3. Upgrade Java used on cocoon.zones.apache.org.
4· Announce this fact to our users.

In the past, it proven to be more social issue that some people were blocking decision about 
changing required Java version. At this moment, I don't see any kind of that effect (it looks like 
every one agrees on the need of change) so I don't think we need to exploit this situation for 
switching to Java 1.6 immediately.

I agree with Peter's arguments that there should be no hurry. On the other hand, I agree with Felix 
that we'll need to switch to 1.6 in a year but provided there are no people blocking this decision 
and we have more frequent releases of Cocoon Core I prefer gradual steps.


If there is anyone who wants to add something to this discussion I think it's a perfect time to 
speak out now. Otherwise, I would like to call a vote next week so we can make a formal decision.

-- 
Grzegorz Kossakowski

Java 5 as minimum requirement for Cocoon trunk

[Reinhard Pötz <re...@apache.org>]

Grzegorz Kossakowski wrote:
> Peter Hunsberger pisze:
>>     But when switching the version why don't switch to 1.6 (I think it's
>>     on MacOSX now also available). Otherwise we have to switch again in
>>     1 year or so (see
>>     http://java.sun.com/products/archive/eol.policy.html). EOL for 1.5
>>     is  October 2009.
>>
>>         WDYT?
>>
>>
>>
>> There might be people who can't run 1.6 yet.  In particular we know 
>> some people are still stuck on old versions of Websphere and similar.  
>> We've had this discussion before and I'm on the side that we can't 
>> support legacy code forever.  However, I do feel that a jump to 1.6 
>> might be a bit premature. We just had this discussion internally over 
>> the last couple of weeks and we found several 1.6 incompatibilities 
>> forcing us to stay on 1.5 for the moment.  If we do have a need to 
>> move to 1.6 in the future it shouldn't be that much of an issue to 
>> change at that point?
> 
> 
> Technically, switching to new Java version is not that hard, things that 
> you need to do are:
> 1. Change required Java version in our parent pom.
> 2. Change profile in Continuum so it uses Java 1.5
> 3. Upgrade Java used on cocoon.zones.apache.org.
> 4· Announce this fact to our users.
> 
> In the past, it proven to be more social issue that some people were 
> blocking decision about changing required Java version. At this moment, 
> I don't see any kind of that effect (it looks like every one agrees on 
> the need of change) so I don't think we need to exploit this situation 
> for switching to Java 1.6 immediately.

I don't see any reason why we should switch to Java 1.6 anytime soon 
because IIRC there hasn't been much change in the Java language itself 
from 1.5 to 1.6.

Most changes happened in the area of Swing, JDBC, concurrency support 
and a bunch of new annotations were introduced which shouldn't have much 
influence on Cocoon.

We should discuss switching to 1.6 not before we have a good use case or 
good reasons, e.g. like now when more and more of our dependencies are 
available for Java 5 only (-> also Spring 3.0 will have Java 5 as 
minimum requirement)

> I agree with Peter's arguments that there should be no hurry. On the 
> other hand, I agree with Felix that we'll need to switch to 1.6 in a 
> year but provided there are no people blocking this decision and we have 
> more frequent releases of Cocoon Core I prefer gradual steps.
> 
> 
> If there is anyone who wants to add something to this discussion I think 
> it's a perfect time to speak out now. Otherwise, I would like to call a 
> vote next week so we can make a formal decision.

Please go ahead.

-- 
Reinhard Pötz                           Managing Director, {Indoqa} GmbH
                          http://www.indoqa.com/en/people/reinhard.poetz/

Member of the Apache Software Foundation
Apache Cocoon Committer, PMC member                  reinhard@apache.org
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