[Biojava-l] [Biojava-dev] Increasing Java version requirement for BioJava

[Steve Darnell]

Hi Spencer,

TL;DR +1 Java 8

I am a senior scientist and team lead at DNASTAR. After nearly 2 years since general availability, we have begun our migration to Java 8. The new language features in Java 8 make it more desirable for development than Java 7 and it is the only version of Java with public updates (all others require paid support).  Java 8 is also widely deployable.

* Windows: Vista, 7, 8, Server 2008
* Mac OS X: 10.8+
* Linux: Oracle 5.5+, RHEL 5.5+, Suse 10 SP2+, Ubuntu 12.04+
* Solaris: 10 Update 9+

I feel we have been pretty conservative with our decision to upgrade. I also recommend BioJava skip to Java 8.

-Steve

-----Original Message-----
From: biojava-dev [mailto:biojava-dev-bounces+darnells=dnastar.com at mailman.open-bio.org] On Behalf Of Terry Casstevens
Sent: Tuesday, January 12, 2016 10:56 AM
To: Spencer Bliven
Cc: biojava-dev; Biojava-l at lists.open-bio.org
Subject: Re: [Biojava-dev] Increasing Java version requirement for BioJava

Dear Spencer,

I'm the lead developer for the Tassel software, and we use the Biojava libraries.  We've required Java 8 for Tassel since August 2014.  If you change, some users will need to upgrade Java regardless.  I recommend going to Java 8.

maizegenetics.net/tassel

Best,

Terry


On Tue, Jan 12, 2016 at 7:16 AM, Spencer Bliven <spencer.bliven at gmail.com> wrote:
> There has been some informal discussion of increasing the Java version 
> requirement for BioJava from the current Java 6 to either 7 or 8. It 
> would be great to hear from the larger BioJava community about whether 
> this would be a welcome change or not.
>
> I will start the discussion by listing what I see as the pros and cons 
> of setting each version as the minimum requirement for BioJava.
>
> Java 6:
> ---------
> + Greatest backwards compatibility
> - No updates since Feb 2013*
> - Some dependencies are not compatible, requiring the use of older 
> versions (currently only log4j, but could be others in the future)
>
> Java 7:
> ---------
> + Most popular version currently
> + Some minor language features added
> - No updates since Apr 2015*
>
> Java 8:
> ---------
> + Tons of awesome new programming features, e.g. lambda functions Only 
> + version supported by Oracle
> - Not available for many systems
>
> * Note that all versions are backwards compatible, so you can always 
> use a more up-to-date JDK for downstream projects. Running outdated 
> software is generally a bad idea, so users are encouraged to use the 
> Java 8 JRE, regardless of the minimum BioJava requirement.
>
>
> One thing I would like to get a sense of is how many BioJava users are 
> still using 6 and 7. @emckee2006 mentioned on github that they still 
> have some servers on 6. I know that getting Java 8 installed on CentOS 
> is rather painful, so probably some users haven't yet updated to 8.
>
> Let me know if I missed anything!
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> Spencer
>
>
>
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