On 29.07.22 12:28, Mike Hallan wrote:
I want to know whether to tell end users that they must move to J11+,
or that J8 is still OK.
it highly depends on what user base you have, but there is usually no
good reason to use anything else outside of the latest java LTS release.
You get the latest enhancements for free and use well supported software.
Also keep in mind that it is fairly unusual to have "java" installed on
an end user system. The time of webstart and applets is long over, JREs
technically don't exist anymore as well defined concept. Lets "code for
the lowest common denominator" is basically a practice from that time
when you hoped that the user had java installed but couldn't influence
which version it was.
Bundling a custom runtime (jlink) with the application might be also a
consideration.
There is also snap, flatpak, appimage, jpackage etc which might help there.
regarding NetBeans itself, over time, more and more tests will move from
JDK 8 to 11 or later. We can't test everything due to limited resources,
and it becomes more valuable to make sure everything works well on
modern java, than on JDK 8. As Neil mentioned, the IDE itself is only
fully supported on JDK 11, 17 and "current at release" since some
libraries ended their support of JDK 8 already, which means some modules
will only load on 11+.
regards,
-michael
