I found this old email reply to someone who asked a similar question. Maybe the same reasoning still applies:
http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/enhanced-metadata-spec-discuss/2013-May/000201.html -Michael On Wed, Apr 27, 2016 at 1:18 PM, Steven Schlansker <stevenschlans...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi core-libs-dev, > > Apologies in advance if this is the wrong list, I was torn between this > one and compiler-dev, but I'm already subscribed here so we'll try this first > :) > > I am trying to understand why the javac '-parameters' option is not enabled by > default. > > Normally it would not be too onerous, but due to some limitations in e.g. > Maven > it is surprisingly difficult to configure correctly in a world where you must > build code that both targets e.g. 1.8 and 1.7 (and soon 1.9): > http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/maven-dev/201604.mbox/browser > > While I am happy to work with the Maven project to improve their support > for sending compiler arguments more flexibly, I did wonder -- why is > this feature not on by default? > > I did some brief searching and was unable to come up with any downside, > but maybe I missed something obvious? Can we turn it on by default for Java > 9? > > Thanks for humoring me, > Steven > >
