On 29/11/2012 12:48 PM, Stephen Connolly wrote:
You only get the new language features from after 1.5 if target > 1.5,
so switching core to use the newer features would make core
incompatible with running on 1.5
Not sure that I understand how this follows.
The target compiler should not determine the Java VM that Maven runs in.
I believe that I can compile 1.5 while running maven in a Java 7 VM.
Ron
On 29 November 2012 17:25, Ron Wheeler <rwhee...@artifact-software.com
<mailto:rwhee...@artifact-software.com>> wrote:
On 29/11/2012 12:01 PM, Curtis Rueden wrote:
Hi Ron,
> Is it not possible to run Maven in a JRE7 VM and compile
code with a
> 1.3 compiler?
If you have a JRE7 VM available, then sure. If JRE7 is not
available for your platform, then it must remain possible to
run Maven with an older JRE, or else no more Maven for you. I
do not know enough about Maven internals to know if it would
be feasible to increase the default source/target version to
1.7 while keeping Maven core itself compatible with 1.5,
though. From Jochen & Stephen's exchange, it sounds like maybe
not. If so, then my vote is for Maven core to remain
compatible with Java 1.5, as Stephen suggested.
I would be surprised if this is true since it is certainly
possible to compile with Java7 and to run Maven in a Java7 VM. I
would not expect changing a default value to affect the running of
Maven.
I certainly am not suggesting doing anything to Maven itself that
would make it so that it would not run in a Java5 VM
I am sure that some of the Maven developers would like to use some
of the new Java features to make the coding easier.
Ron
> What keeps people on old versions for over 8 years(1.5)?
One reason is old hardware. For example, if you have a Mac
PowerPC, you are stuck on OS X 10.5 "Leopard", which will
never run Java 7. Another reason is old software. If you run
OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard", you are stuck with Java 6, since the
OpenJDK7 and Oracle JDK 7 projects decided to require 10.7
"Lion" or newer. This might be OK if upgrading were free,
and/or if Lion were strictly an "upgrade", but it actually
removes functionality (e.g., Rosetta).
When deciding whether to start requiring Java 6 for some of
our OSS projects, we took at look at our usage statistics, and
found that (as of ~1 year ago) more than 10% of our total user
base ran OS X 10.5 or earlier. So we decided to wait a bit longer.
Regards,
Curtis
--
Ron Wheeler
President
Artifact Software Inc
email: rwhee...@artifact-software.com
<mailto:rwhee...@artifact-software.com>
skype: ronaldmwheeler
phone: 866-970-2435, ext 102
--
Ron Wheeler
President
Artifact Software Inc
email: rwhee...@artifact-software.com
skype: ronaldmwheeler
phone: 866-970-2435, ext 102