Re: [hibernate-dev] Should we support out of date non-LTS Java versions?

Hi, I think we should make it clear that only LTS JVMs are actually supported, and non-LTS JVMs are only supported on a "best effort" basis, with some focus on the very latest non-LTS JVM. I doubt we have the appropriate resources to do anything more than that. To be more specific, I would see things this way: - We may remove compatibility with an LTS JVM in a major release. - We will always, systematically remove compatibility with older non-LTS JVMs in every major or minor release, except the very latest JVM (which might be a non-LTS): we don't even test them anymore, and we don't list them as compatible on our website. - We may remove compatibility with a non-LTS JVM in a micro release, but we try not to actively do it... Specifically in the case of your dependency removal in a micro: that doesn't seem very useful to users, and doesn't solve a bug, so I wouldn't do it. Also, changing dependencies in a micro doesn't feel quite right: I'd expect micros to be drop-in replacements, and I can imagine adding/removing dependencies to cause trouble in build tools/build configuration. But I wouldn't make it a hard rule, either: we may be forced to do it one day because of a bug, and such a small break is still better than a bug. Yoann Rodière Hibernate NoORM Team yoann(a)hibernate.org On Wed, 13 Feb 2019 at 03:47, Sanne Grinovero <sanne(a)hibernate.org&gt; wrote: > Hi all, > > I just tested if we still need the dependency to > 'javax.activation:javax.activation-api:1.2.0' from Hibernate ORM / > master, as I was suspecting the original reasons to add it might be > out of date. > > I guessed almost right, as it turns out we don't need this dependency > for Java 11, nor it was ever needed for Java 8 either: it was > introduced to solve a specific Java 9 compatibility issue. > > I verified it's still needed for Java 9 compatibility. Personally that > makes me think I'd rather remove the dependency, people should no > longer use Java 9; > > Java 9 has been "out of support" since a while now: I expect people to > either be on the latest stable release Java 11 - or on the previous > stable release aka Java 8 (others might be toying with 12 and/or 13 > but that's not relevant). > > Clearly since we have no more 5.x minor releases planned, I'm thinking > of dropping a JVM version in a micro (!) - but considering this is an > unsupported non-LTS JVM I'm not considering this to be an outrageous > idea as we'd normally treat such a suggestion. > > Please don't take this as nitpicking about removing a single > dependecy: that's easy enough for people to ignore and workaround by > re-adding it explicitly; it's more important to focus on us creating a > clear policy for the future. > > Can we establish how we'll treat support for any other future > non-Long-Term-Support JVM version? > > Next time we might have a more tricky issue, and I think we should > make our intentions and policy clear so to have freedom to drop > support for experimental Java releases as we see fit, provided they > are out of date. > > I couldn't test JDK 10 - but that doesn't matter as the details of > this specific issue are irrelevant to the main point of agreeing on a > general policy. > > Comments? > > Thanks, > Sanne > _______________________________________________ > hibernate-dev mailing list > hibernate-dev(a)lists.jboss.org > https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/hibernate-dev > _______________________________________________ hibernate-dev mailing list hibernate-dev(a)lists.jboss.org https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/hibernate-dev