On 31 October 2014 15:37, Christopher <ctubbsii-fedora(a)apache.org> wrote:
On Fri, Oct 31, 2014 at 5:35 AM, Mat Booth
<fedora(a)matbooth.co.uk> wrote:
> On 31 October 2014 08:18, Max Rydahl Andersen <manderse(a)redhat.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>>>>> Fedora 20 used to have 3 different Java versions (5, 7, 8).
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ok, why no Java 6 ?
>>>>
>>>
>>> Besides many technical reason the biggest one is non-technical in my
>>> eyes - no one volunteered to do it. You know it's always a matter of
"who
>>> will do the work?". I'm pretty sure that if someone jumps in and say
"Hey,
>>> I'll maintain Java 6, fix problems/adopt Java 6 to changes in the OS if
>>> neeeded, help strengthen the switching between JREs, go through the Java
>>> projects(shipped in Fedora) and help them properly set their targets in
>>> build scripts so builds properly work on Java 6 and etc" there will be
no
>>> objection to having Java 6. :)
>>>
>>
>> Fair enough.
>>
>> OpenJDK 7
>>>>> was removed from F21 because its support will end before F21 EOL and
>>>>> we
>>>>> don't want to ship software not supported by upstream.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> So for users most stable thing is to use Oracle JDK builds instead
>>>> which
>>>> are and will stay available ?
>>>>
>>>
>>> Users can still try to use it but it's something that they have to do
>>> on their own - download, extract, set PATH, etc. Just like on every
>>> platform with Oracle JVM.
>>>
>>
>> Yeah, this is similar experience for developers on all other platforms
>> so its expected/assumed.
>>
>> No separate repo with "binaries that is currently supported but will not
>>>> stay supported for all of fedora 21 lifetime" ?
>>>>
>>>
>>> 1. Fedora can not legally redistribute Oracle JDK.
>>>
>>
>> I know - hence why I would think having a openjdk 7 build would make
>> sense.
>>
>> 2. Fedora can not distribute something that Fedora developers can not
>>> support if there is a problem in it (as it is with Oracle JDK).
>>>
>>
>> so *any* package that is known to be marked as EOL sometime in the
>> future before the upcoming Fedora EOL's gets removed from that future
>> Fedora release ? Even that Java 7 is still the most used and targeted Java
>> version ?
>>
>
>
> Maybe I misunderstand the use-case, but your projects can still target
> Java 7 even if Eclipse is running on Java 8.
>
>
That's not entirely true. This only works if a true JDK7 exists on the
system. While newer JDKs are able to target older runtimes, there are cases
where one can introduce source-incompatible changes that work in a newer
JDK, but not in an older JDK. This matters for collaborating on projects
where some team members are not using the newer JDK to target the older
runtime. For instance, this happened with JDK7/JDK6 on my team... JDK7
allows certain use of generics syntax that properly compiles to JDK6
target, and validates in Eclipse as JDK6 source-compatible, but the actual
JDK6 compiler treats as an error. I had to abandon my use of Fedora 20 as a
development environment for our project, and revert to CentOS6 in order to
guarantee I wasn't introducing source that was incompatible with JDK6. Not
making older JDKs (even stale ones) available is likely to discourage Java
developers from using Fedora as a development platform.
Doesn't Eclipse's "Execution Environments" solve this in your
case? When
you select the Java 6 EE for example, then Eclipse should tell you when you
attempt to use syntax or features that are not available in Java 6. It's
arguably a bug in Eclipse if this is not true.
Personally, unlike the original poster, I don't care which JVM
Eclipse is
running on, itself (OpenJDK 8, or whatever is latest, works for me). But, I
do care about which JDKs are available on the system that Eclipse can
launch to build projects, because that affects whether I can use Fedora as
my development platform on team projects where some team members are using
older JDKs (which should be fine, until the project bumps its minimum JVM
dependency).
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Mat Booth
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