Dave Marion raises a good point. With is proposal, the change would be in the pom to allow java 8 language constructs with the 1.9 branch as it stand today,
Currently the 1.9.x branch does not contain any code that is not incompatible with java 7. The 1.10 release could be compiled with a java 7 target and be binary compatible without any code changes. Our release artifacts are the source, so that would remain an option. Any changes necessary for compiling with java 7 would be minor and could be determined with a diff between the 1.9.x pom(s) and the 1.10.0 pom(s). What would change is that any future Accumulo versions, if there are any, say 1.10.1 or 1.11.x, then those versions could break java 7 compatibility. It would be at that point that anyone using java 7 would need to make the necessary code changes to allow continued java 7 support, if that was their requirement. Migration to Hadoop 3 requires a minimum of java 8 [1], adopting this could help users begin the migration process. [1] - https://hadoop.apache.org/docs/r3.0.0/index.html
