On 29/11/2012 2:27 PM, Stephen Connolly wrote:
It was a response to "I am sure that some of the Maven developers
would like to use some of the new Java features to make the coding
easier."
For the Maven (core) developers to take advantage of the newer
features, we would need to up the <source> level we compile core with.
JavaC will allow <source> less than <target> but not the other way
around, so if we want to use the newer features in core, we force all
Maven users to have to run core with a newer version of Maven.
That is what I thought when I made that comment.
At this point in time I do not see any compelling features in 1.7
which are worth the difference.
No annotations that strike your fancy?
If it turns out that a core library we use needs a newer version of
Java because that core library needed the newer language features,
then we would have to consider upgrading core to use the newer version
of that core library.
The only feature in 1.7 that we would benefit from is the try with
resources... which is not that big a difference. 1.8's lambdas is a
different story though... but it will likely be a good while before we
can consider alienating all the pre 1.8 users
It would be interesting to see where the Maven users are WRT to Java
environments.
I can not imagine that most developers are struggling with old hardware
and OSs.
Programmer productivity is usually a big concern and having someone
running a Pentium or old Apple with 512 Mb of memory and trying to run
Eclipse/Netbeans with Maven seems like a horrible way to save $400.
On 29 November 2012 18:14, Ron Wheeler <rwhee...@artifact-software.com
<mailto:rwhee...@artifact-software.com>> wrote:
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
<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
