On Wed, Mar 26, 2014 at 9:31 AM, Deepak Bhole
<dbhole(a)redhat.com> wrote:
> * Christopher <ctubbsii(a)apache.org> [2014-03-25 19:59]:
>> I also would like to see 1.7.0 stick around for awhile. Not
>> necessarily as the default, but at least available in the repos. As it
>> stands, it's difficult to use a modern Fedora on projects that are
>> still developing against JDK 1.6.
>>
>
> Unfortunately, OpenJDK7 will be EOLd in April 2015[1], which is within
> the support time-frame of the F21. This is one the reasons why we would
> like to be able to switch over to OpenJDK8 asap for F21.
>
> 1:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/eol-135779.html
I don't see how Oracle tentatively dropping long-term public support
for 7 means that Fedora needs can no longer provide OpenJDK7 in its
repos (not as default, of course), with or without additional updates,
for developers who want to use a modern Fedora, but need to develop
for applications/hardware that requires strict 7 compatibility.
The alternative is Fedora fans will be forced to use an older version
of Fedora, use a different Linux distro, or find some hackish
workaround (yum --releasever=20 ...; which is problematic, because
every version 8 update will obsolete 7, just like 7 currently does
with 6 packages), or download untrusted 3rd party packages.
It seems to me that support in Fedora would be pretty easy: just make
sure it doesn't cause a packaging conflict and recommend the newer
JDK8. Maybe call it -compat? But, I defer to the experts on Fedora
packaging/support policies and decisions. I'm just a user, and don't
know all the implications for trying to include it. I just think it'd
be nice to keep around.
It's not a question if we can have multiple parallel JDKs (we already
can, you can install 7 and 8 at the same time).
What we *can't* have in Fedora is a high-profile package which doesn't
receive security updates upstream and there is nobody in Fedora willing
and capable of doing that.
What's the big deal with using '--target 1.7' anyway? That covers 99% of
use cases, and any possible problems will have to be caught by CI
running whatever you'd be deploying on anyway.
--
Stanislav Ochotnicky <sochotnicky(a)redhat.com>
Software Engineer - Developer Experience
PGP: 7B087241
Red Hat Inc.