James Im wrote:
Dave Roberts wrote:
It was 01/01/2007 15:52, when Niklas Gustavsson wrote:
What do you think? I'm just starting with the MINA stuff and need to
know if anyone still needs 1.4 support.
Yes, I still need 1.4 support. Although 1.5 has been around for a
while, it doesn't appear to have penetrated the market enough (for
us) to jump to it. Some of our customers not on the main stream OSs
are still using Java 1.4, sometimes because of lack of support in
the OS.
I certainly don't like option 2 :) My main reason for using and
getting involved in this project is the SSL support.
So at this point I would have to vote for option 3, don't move to
MINA, but I realise I could be in a minority here.
I understand that some people/businesses make the decision to stay with
older Java releases. It is safe for them to do so. The problem comes
when many people make the same decision because somehow java remains
stucked into the past. However it doesn't need to be like that: it is
possible to run java 1.4 bytecode with the VM 1.5 or even VM 1.6.
Problem is that up-to-date JVMs might not be available for these
platforms or the customer might, as you say, want to be on the very safe
side.
Anyway I think that a new project like this one must adopt new
technologies (BTW 1.5 is already old...).
I personally use VM 1.6 with java 1.5 bytecodes and I have no problem.
I think we need to listen to those using FtpServer and see how we can be
the best fit for their needs, therefore this thread :-)
I just know one way to use new java features and remain perpetually
compatible with old VM. It is to create branches. The problem is
maintenance and the solution is to "freeze" the code and just fix bugs
in the branch. If enough people are motivated, they can backport some
new features but that won't always be possible and that's a lot of
additional work.
Right, having branches even before we made our first release doesn't
sound all that fun :-)
In the end, you can't please to everybody.
Agreed, and it makes this a hard decision as both sides of the choice
makes a of of sense.
/niklas
