FWIW, we use the animal-sniffer plugin to verify full Java 7 compatibility to avoid those historical issues with simply setting the target JDK. But, I also understand if that plugin does not instill sufficient confidence for Java 7 compatibility. I can do the format-only-in-jdk8-profile strategy, no problem.
I'm also in favor of ceasing activity on these branches, but as long as we are doing bug fixes from them, I think the build tooling should also be well-maintained to make sure releasing is smooth and produces high quality build artifacts. I'm less concerned about the 1.7 branch... especially if we're expecting 1.7.4 to be the last 1.7 release. I can postpone any significant formatting change until after the 1.7.4 release, if it helps simplify things. On Fri, Feb 16, 2018 at 10:13 AM Josh Elser <els...@apache.org> wrote: > +1 to not changing min-Java on the release lines that supported Java 7. > > Let's just cease activity on these branches instead :) > > On 2/16/18 9:55 AM, Sean Busbey wrote: > > I'm opposed to requiring Java 8 to build on branches that we claim > support > > running under Java 7. Historically relying on "compile for earlier target > > JDK" has just led to pain down the road when it inevitably doesn't work. > > > > Just make it a recommendation for contributions and have our precommit > > checks do the build with Java 8 to verify the formatting has already > > happened. > > > > On Thu, Feb 15, 2018 at 10:24 PM, Christopher <ctubb...@apache.org> > wrote: > > > >> Primarily for accessibility reasons (screen space with a comfortable > font), > >> but also to support readability for devs working on sensibly-sized > screens, > >> I want to change our formatter to format with 100 char line length > instead > >> of its current 160. > >> > >> Many of our files need to be reformatted anyway, because the current > >> formatter is configured incorrectly for Java 8 lambda syntax and needs > to > >> be fixed, so this might be a good opportunity to make the switch. > >> > >> Also, at this point I think it is sensible to require Java 8 to build > >> Accumulo... even when building older branches. (Accumulo 1.x will still > >> support running on Java 7, of course, but Java 8 would be required to > build > >> it). The reason for this requirement is that in order to reduce merge > >> conflicts and merge bugs between branches, I'd like to update the > >> formatting across all branches, but the formatter which supports this > >> syntax requires Java 8 to run. The alternative to requiring Java 8 > would be > >> to only run the formatter when building with Java 8... and skip > formatting > >> if building with Java 7, which might result in some unformatted > >> contributions, depending on the JRE version used to build. > >> > > > > > > >
