Thanks Spencer for the nice summary! I'm going to give my vote to 1.8, because of all the new features and because I think we really need to move forward in this one.
I would be in any case ready to compromise in 1.7 if we see that 1.8 will really cut off a significant amount of users. With the condition that the next release will then go to 1.8. The only thing I feel strongly against is staying in 1.6. Whatever we do we should avoid that. Jose On Tue, Jan 12, 2016 at 10:06 AM, Andreas Prlic <[email protected]> wrote: > Based on some RCSB PDB analytics data, I'd estimate that about 2/3 of all > users are already on 1.8. However there is still a significant number of > users on 1.7 (somewhere around 1/4). > > As such my vote is to upgrade to 1.7 for now and move to 1.8 at some point > in the future, when 1.7 usage has declined further. > > Andreas > > > > > > > On Tue, Jan 12, 2016 at 8:56 AM, Terry Casstevens <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> 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 >> > > > > -- > ----------------------------------------------------------------------- > Dr. Andreas Prlic > RCSB PDB Protein Data Bank > Technical & Scientific Team Lead > University of California, San Diego > > Editor Software Section > PLOS Computational Biology > > BioJava Project Lead > ----------------------------------------------------------------------- > > _______________________________________________ > 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
