I've experienced the same situation, my last project had to run on Java 1.3 with no chances of getting 1.4. I would imagine that there are plenty of production environments without the ability to upgrade to the newest versions, for one reason or another.
I think it makes sense to attempt to support as many users and versions as possible, but there must be limits somewhere. I think staying 1 version behind the latest would be a good step, but commons would lose the ability to be used in Ant, for example, which targets 1.2. It may be overkill, but would it ever be possible to consider creating different branches of the code base for different Java versions? If something we're implementing is also implemented in Java 1.5... it would be nice to get a version built for 1.5 which would possibly be faster and easier to manage, using the built-in features instead of ours. This may be a good idea, or a terrible one which creates unnecessary complexity. I'm not sure. I believe that Tomcat creates releases for 1.4 and pre-1.4 versions, but I'm not sure what the reasons behind it are. On Tue, 2003-09-02 at 10:50, Gary Gregory wrote: > Over here, we'd be lucky just to get off 1.3.1 and on to 1.4, forget about > 1.5. :-( Our Java requirements are based on what the most common version of > IBM WebSphere our customers run, which is the version that runs on 1.3.x. It > is a pain but our reality. > > > So including/not including 1.4 or 1.5-like features in the commons is not > something /I/ think about beyond the desire that such feature be nicely > packaged and upgradeable (or at least documented) to the JRE version. > > Gary > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Yoav Shapira [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Sent: Monday, September 01, 2003 19:49 > > To: Jakarta Commons Developers List > > Subject: Re: [primitives] Open for business > > > > Howdy, > > I may have missed the original discussion, but is primitives going to have > > much of a market given the relative proximity of JDK 1.5 with its > > autoboxing features? Or are there a bunch of features planned that aren't > > going to be in JDK 1.5 anyways? > > > > Yoav Shapira > > > > On Tue, 2 Sep 2003, Stephen Colebourne wrote: > > > > > The [primitives] project has been created and is now ready for > > discussion, > > > debate and coding. > > > > > > At present, I have NOT removed anything from [collections]. I believe > > that > > > there may be people with dependencies on the primitive code there. I do > > not > > > plan to release that code however, nor will its prescence block a > > > [collections] release. I think that this will probably be the position > > until > > > [primitives] is ready. > > > > > > So... lets try to get [primitives] sorted ;-) > > > > > > Stephen > > > > > > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > > > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > > > > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
