Hi Spencer, TL;DR +1 Java 8
I am a senior scientist and team lead at DNASTAR. After nearly 2 years since general availability, we have begun our migration to Java 8. The new language features in Java 8 make it more desirable for development than Java 7 and it is the only version of Java with public updates (all others require paid support). Java 8 is also widely deployable. * Windows: Vista, 7, 8, Server 2008 * Mac OS X: 10.8+ * Linux: Oracle 5.5+, RHEL 5.5+, Suse 10 SP2+, Ubuntu 12.04+ * Solaris: 10 Update 9+ I feel we have been pretty conservative with our decision to upgrade. I also recommend BioJava skip to Java 8. -Steve -----Original Message----- From: biojava-dev [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Terry Casstevens Sent: Tuesday, January 12, 2016 10:56 AM To: Spencer Bliven Cc: biojava-dev; [email protected] Subject: Re: [Biojava-dev] Increasing Java version requirement for BioJava 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 <[email protected]> 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 Running outdated 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 > > > > _______________________________________________ > biojava-dev mailing list > [email protected] > http://mailman.open-bio.org/mailman/listinfo/biojava-dev _______________________________________________ biojava-dev mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.open-bio.org/mailman/listinfo/biojava-dev _______________________________________________ Biojava-l mailing list - [email protected] http://mailman.open-bio.org/mailman/listinfo/biojava-l
