[Biojava-l] biojava and Java version

Fri May 11 08:14:24 UTC 2012

Are we talking about *developers* or *users* here?

If we're talking about users, then could we not generate alternate versions of the maven artifacts/final jars by using profiles and the compiler plugin target designation.

Only if we're talking about *developers* does the source code Annotation issue arise. How many active biojava developers are there that are running on a PPC OSX system?

Or have I misunderstood?

On 11 May 2012, at 05:00, Steve Darnell wrote:

> Hi Andreas,
> 
> In the end, we all have to make decisions that best support our users. Owning an old Mac is a tough proposition (especially a PPC in an Intel world) since the Mac culture favors OS and hardware upgrades every 2-3 years. It's easy to be left in the dust.
> 
> ~Steve
> 
> Sent from my HTC Merge
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andreas Prlic [andreas at sdsc.edu]
> Received: Thursday, 10 May 2012, 7:08pm
> To: Steve Darnell [darnells at dnastar.com]
> CC: Biojava [biojava-l at lists.open-bio.org]
> Subject: Re: [Biojava-l] biojava and Java version
> 
> Hi Steve,
> 
> I agree with looking forward and I usually give the EOL argument to
> Java 1.5 users as well and try to convince them to upgrade, too.  In
> the end Apple is to blame for putting this customer in a difficult
> situation and not having the choice of an upgrade.
> 
> I am bringing this up since at the RCSB PDB we are using BioJava in a
> couple of Java webstart applications and as such we are confronted
> with a diverse user group.  80% of the users are on Java 1.6,  but the
> rest is using a variety of newer and older versions.
> 
> Since we can't control the Java version at the user end I would prefer
> to stay a bit backwards compatible as long as it does not cause pain
> and move along with the bulk of users.  Removing @Override annotations
> seems like an easy enough compromise for supporting 1.5 and making the
> few people happy, who are still stuck with legacy hardware.
> 
> Andreas
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 4:08 PM, Steve Darnell <darnells at dnastar.com> wrote:
>> Greetings,
>> 
>> I agree with the original BioJava3 design principles (http://biojava.org/wiki/BioJava3_Design), the first of which is "BioJava3 (BJ3) will freely incorporate features from Java 6."
>> 
>> Java 5 has been EOL'd since October 2009 and Java 6 EOL is scheduled for November 2012 (http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/eol-135779.html). Apple stopped using PowerPC processors in 2006 and has not updated OS X 10.5 in almost a year (June 2011).
>> 
>> I suggest planning for the future rather than clinging to the past. There is a positive buzz with my coworkers about switching to Java 7. The language changes alone are a very welcomed improvement: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/jdk7-relnotes-418459.html
>> 
>> * Binary Literals
>> * Strings in switch Statements
>> * The try-with-resources Statement
>> * Catching Multiple Exception Types and Rethrowing Exceptions with Improved Type Checking
>> * Underscores in Numeric Literals
>> * Type Inference for Generic Instance Creation
>> * Improved Compiler Warnings and Errors When Using Non-Reifiable Formal Parameters with Varargs Methods
>> 
>> I do sympathize for those who cannot upgrade from OS X 10.5 and PPC. Perhaps the SoyLatte OpenJDK 7 build for PPC may provide an acceptable solution for running BioJava3 on Leopard PPC? http://landonf.bikemonkey.org/static/soylatte/bsd-dist/openjdk7_darwin/openjdk7-macppc-2009-12-16-b4.tar.bz2.
>> 
>> Best regards,
>> Steve
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: biojava-l-bounces at lists.open-bio.org [mailto:biojava-l-bounces at lists.open-bio.org] On Behalf Of Andreas Prlic
>> Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2012 4:51 PM
>> To: Biojava
>> Subject: [Biojava-l] biojava and Java version
>> 
>> Hi,
>> 
>> After some discussions with a user I was reminded of the issue that there are some PowerPC based OSX systems that are locked into
>> OSX10.5.8 . They can't upgrade their OS and they can't upgrade to Java
>> 1.6 because none of these are available for PowerPCs. While that is not our fault, the question is if we should try to make BioJava backwards compatible towards 1.5.
>> 
>> Anybody out there on such a system?
>> 
>> Any opinions on making BioJava java 1.5 backwards compatible again?
>> Essentially it means a global replace all "@Override" with ""
>> 
>> Andreas
>> _______________________________________________
>> Biojava-l mailing list  -  Biojava-l at lists.open-bio.org http://lists.open-bio.org/mailman/listinfo/biojava-l
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Biojava-l mailing list  -  Biojava-l at lists.open-bio.org
> http://lists.open-bio.org/mailman/listinfo/biojava-l

Later,

Andy
--------
Yada, yada, yada...

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