[hibernate-dev] Java 6, 7 and 8... oh my!

[Steve Ebersole]

After considering this some more, I think moving to Java 8 as baseline is
just not reasonable yet.  And tbh I just do not see a compelling reason to
move to Java 7 as the baseline.  So if reasonably possible I would still
like to remain backwards compatible with Java 6.

The only hurdle I believe is this JAXB point.  I see 2 options...

1) Make certain our code is compatible with JAXB 2.0.  I am not well versed
enough in JAXB features between its versions yet to know how good of an
idea this is.

2) make our codr compatible with the newer JAXB version.  This works as-is
in Java 7 and 8 runtimes.  For use in Java 6 runtimes, users would need to
update the JAXB used in their JDK/JRE.  Doing so is a well defined process
using endorsed libs.  See
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/technotes/guides/standards/index.html

I think option (1) is the way to go, but do not have a lot of experience
here.  What do y'all think?
On Apr 1, 2015 6:34 AM, "Steve Ebersole" <steve at hibernate.org> wrote:

> Baseline on Java 8?  Hmm... Well thanks for tempting me :)
>
> What do you mean by "be able to experiment with significant API
> improvements"?
>
> On Tue, Mar 31, 2015 at 7:18 PM, Sanne Grinovero <sanne at hibernate.org>
> wrote:
>
>> I wouldn't disagree on requiring Java 7.
>> I probably wouldn't disagree with Java 8 either, after all we're not
>> removing older versions of Hibernate from any download location and
>> we'll still support and maintain some older versions. It would
>> actually be nice to have the latest ORM version to be able to
>> experiment with significant API improvements.
>>
>> FYI Hibernate Search is requiring Java 7 already, and our CI servers
>> are already testing our projects with JDK9 as well.
>>
>> That said, Java 6 is still being supported by some vendors. Not by
>> Oracle, but Red Hat and SAP will support it for much longer.
>>
>> -- Sanne
>>
>> On 1 April 2015 at 01:04, Steve Ebersole <steve at hibernate.org> wrote:
>> > So we now have to deal with a multi-jdk build in Hibernate ORM.  We need
>> > Java 8 in order to compile the new hibernate-java8 module.
>> >
>> > I wanted to remain compatible with Java 6 for the rest.  However, I ran
>> > into a snag there because of JAXB which we now use (in conjunction with
>> > StAX) to process XML in ORM.  ANyway, the JAX generation creates a model
>> > that is only compatible with Java 7.  I have not yet had time to
>> > investigate this deeply.  But it has to do with a change in the
>> definition
>> > of javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlElement and a change in its definition
>> > between 1.6 and 1.7 to add a new
>> > attribute javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlElement#required.
>> >
>> > If anyone is familiar with this situation, I'd love to hear some options
>> > before I spend a lot of time investigating it.
>> >
>> > The other option is that we say we are going to drop Java 6 support
>> since
>> > it has been unsupported now for, what, 3 years?
>> > _______________________________________________
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>>
>
>