Peter B. West wrote:
Jess Holle wrote:
Java 5 runs on HPUX and AIX machines as well -- as well as on Solaris
x86. When you've got Windows, Mac OS X, x86 Linux, Solaris, HPUX,
and AIX covered, I'd say that's pretty good. The other platforms
are, er, odd balls.
The question is whether you hold everything else back for the odd
balls that seem unlikely to progress beyond 1.4.
A view from the outside.
With both HPUX and AIX, I imagine that there is another variable -
which version of the OS supports 1.5. AIX versions don't come for the
price of a Vista licence, and the same probably holds for HPUX. In
addition, there may be minimum hardware requirements for upgrades.
Talk to Chris about this. He has always been prominent in defending
the FOP interests of his employers, and seems to know a bit about
these issues.
Wile we're on the topic...
Concerning the issue of retaining 1.4 compatibility by hamstringing
the use of 1.5 constructs: a truly, deeply, madly ridiculous idea. Go
to 1.5, or don't. Simple. Don't complicate things with this notion of
using generics, but nothing else.
If (real) 1.5 is feasible, what about 1.6. There was a huge jump in
the language itself between 1.4 and 1.5, which is why it has taken so
long to wean the world off 1.4. There is not such leap between 1.5 and
1.6. The survey should canvas 1.5 and 1.6. I'd be curious to see how
many systems support the first and not the second.
Java 6 is supported on Windows, Mac OS X, x86 Linux, Solaris, HPUX, and
AIX as well -- /but/ the Mac OS X support is limited to 64-bit Leopard
only and the WebSphere does not support Java 6 yet and it seems like it
will be a while until that changes.
Java 6 has been out since December 2006, so everyone that is ever going
to support it (except for WebSphere) likely does already. That said,
Java 6 is not nearly so monumental of an improvement over Java 5 as Java
5 was over 1.4 -- at least in terms of features one would need to
compile against. There are some really compelling features one might
conditionally/reflectively use, e.g. in client apps, but I've not felt
to hampered by building with Java 5 rather than 6 (as I have to) most of
the time. The runtime performance, scalability, and manageability of
Java 6 are much better than those of Java 5, however...
--
Jess Holle
