I personally had trouble downloading Java 5 when I wanted to start working on Geotools. I think when we are using technologies like Java, we should be prepared to follow through the leadership of the owner of the technology. We don't have to immediately switch, of course, but when Java 5 is already EOL, it means the Java has enough reason to force everyone into Java 6 (taking into consideration of people who will quit supporting them) If we developers do not embrace change ourselves, how can we convince the world to change with us. I am not saying it is always right to blindly upgrade, but it is the fact that we tried that will help us identify issues, find workarounds for them or fix them.
A slightly irrelevant example but my message is clear in it: Windows 7 can be so improved today is because many people blindly upgraded to Vista and found many problems that Windows 7 benefit from not making the same mistakes. I think of Geotools with Java 5 as Windows XP in this analogy. 2010/6/4 Mathieu Baudier <mbaud...@argeo.org>: >> Grabbing a JDK 5 today requires quite some extra jumps in the downloads, > > very true, and it has become even harder since Oracle's purchase of Sun > >> and we formally support building only against Java 5, by this >> meaning Java 6 builds might actually fail (sometime a unit test > > I built GeoTools trunk recently (for the OSGi project we are trying to > set up with Jody) on a OpenJdk 6 b16 on CentOS 5.5 x86_64 and it went > very smoothly. > >> is stupidly dependent on hash iteration order, though other times >> there are less obvious issues). > > Yes, we had this as well and ended up hacking the unit tests to check > which version we are running. A bit ugly but I did not find any better > solution. > > Another field with a lot of problems (as always since 1.4) is all the > XML / web services libraries included in the JRE. Behavior or included > libraries versions can significantly change between Java 5 and 6. > > But all this is still what I would call "comfort" issues (not the same > as having generics or not when you from 1.4 to 1.5, if you see what I > mean). > I'm fully aware that it is easier for me to say so since I don't have > to maintain such a huge and complex codebase as GeoTools... > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > ThinkGeek and WIRED's GeekDad team up for the Ultimate > GeekDad Father's Day Giveaway. ONE MASSIVE PRIZE to the > lucky parental unit. See the prize list and enter to win: > http://p.sf.net/sfu/thinkgeek-promo > _______________________________________________ > Geotools-devel mailing list > Geotools-devel@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/geotools-devel > -- L I M ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ThinkGeek and WIRED's GeekDad team up for the Ultimate GeekDad Father's Day Giveaway. ONE MASSIVE PRIZE to the lucky parental unit. See the prize list and enter to win: http://p.sf.net/sfu/thinkgeek-promo _______________________________________________ Geotools-devel mailing list Geotools-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/geotools-devel
