[Biojava-l] Increasing Java version requirement for BioJava

[Jan Stourac]

We are using Java 8 (because it is requirement of one library) in almost 
all our projects, so I am fine with both 7 and 8.

But even though I agree with the plan of upgrading, I would like also to 
note the importance of checking java/openjdk packages available in the 
repositories of popular distros... For example Debian 8 (current stable) 
or Ubuntu 14.04 LTS still do not have Java 8 in standard repositories 
and it's a hard question what is better version to force - Java 7 with 
no updates from Oracle (but I think that RedHat still take care of 
OpenJDK 7) or Java 8 with lack of support from some disto maintainers?

Cheers,
Jan.

On 01/12/2016 01:16 PM, Spencer Bliven 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 
> <http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/eol-135779.html>*
> - 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 
> <https://plumbr.eu/blog/java/java-version-statistics-2015-edition> 
> version currently
> + Some minor language features added
> - No updates since Apr 2015 
> <http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/eol-135779.html>*
>
> 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 Running outdated 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 
> <https://github.com/biojava/biojava/issues/364#issuecomment-170710242> 
> 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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