I'm not sure how to respond.. But, I'll try anyways.. 8-) First a little bit of background about me. I design software in the embedded space. So my interest in using NetBeans revolves around the C/C++ plugin module. I don't use Java in my professional life but do like using it. It's also interesting to me from a language point of view. So, I am not qualified to make feature changes or bug fixes, unless the bugs are really simple ones. Plus, working in the Java space not something that really gets me excited. But, that's okay because I'm trying to contribute in my own personal way.
For me, I find fixing the code warnings are interesting. There is a lot of technical debt we carry along since the project is big and has a history. It's something I can contribute to and hopefully it helps others. From a technical point of view, the warnings are the compilers way of saying to the user, this code is problematic. It's certainly okay to ignore it but there really is something here that one should address. Also, fixing these warning is a way for me to look at the code and learn how all the pieces fit together. Not to mention, I really do become a better Java user as a result of me having to give some thought to what I'm trying to do. Recently, I submitted a change dealing with the Class raw type. I spent a lot of time looking at the Java Language Spec as well as research about how things should work. So that makes me better with the language. Now, onto the details about the change to the project.properties file. There are a couple of places where I did make a change to the code to make it use generics. Once I did this, the code stopped compiling because the compiler had been told to use 1.6 version of code. Yet, all i was doing was using the diamond operator, which is a Java version 1.7 feature. So now the code is effectively tied to version 1.6 of the compiler. That doesn't seem proper to me. And that is the reason I posted this simple request to find out what should be done. In my specific case, I just simply skipped the code and did nothing. So I'm not really doing this for aesthetics. But, did actually have a technical reason for asking. Hopefully this more clearly explains what I'm trying to accomplish and why. -brad w. On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 8:18 PM Tim Boudreau <niftin...@gmail.com> wrote: > If you feel like fixing all the build warnings due to code not having > generics and the like, sure! :-) > > This is one of those "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" things. There is > nothing wrong with source level 1.6 for infrequently modified code that's > stable. If it were undergoing a major rewrite, I would expect the author to > do that sort of thing. But doing it for the sake of aesthetics? Far better > to spend time on actual features and bug fixes than cosmetic changes that > don't affect semantics. It would be an utter waste of time, with the real > risk that accidental semantic changes will be introduced that do break > things. Don't do it unless the reward is worth the risk and the time that > could be spent doing real work. > > -Tim > > On Mon, Jul 15, 2019 at 5:44 PM Brad Walker <bwal...@musings.com> wrote: > > > We have 417 project.properties files in the git repo.. > > > > These seem to be part of a Netbeans project for the various different > > components. > > > > I've noticed the project.properties file contains the following: > > > > javac.source=1.6 > > > > Should we not think about maybe bumping that to 1.8? > > > > -brad w. > > > -- > http://timboudreau.com >
