I want to bump the minimum supported version of Java to 7 for the next version after the 1.6.x series. (Currently, this is tracked in JIRA as 1.7.0, and the master branch in git).
We've discussed this in detail for 1.5.0 and 1.6.0, and it has been postponed for various reasons. I'd rather not rehash those discussions in detail, but I really think it's time to do it. So, if you have a serious objection that you think is still valid, and would warrant delaying further, I'd like to hear it. FYI, JDK6 reached EOL over a year ago, and JDK7 will reach EOL next year around this time. Some Linux distributions aren't even planning to provide JDK7 in their repos, and provide only JDK8 (just released), because it's expected to EOL within their support lifecycle. It'd be nice to develop newer versions on a modern Linux OS without jumping through hoops. JDK7 has been available in CentOS/RHEL for some time now, and I'd be surprised if RHEL7 (still in beta) included JRE6 at all. Plus, now there's the known javadoc6 vulnerabilities which require us patching javadocs before putting on the website (which we don't do for the javadoc jars, because they build with JDK6, so they would be vulnerable if somebody dumped them and pushed them onto a website). -- Christopher L Tubbs II http://gravatar.com/ctubbsii
