[hibernate-dev] Should we support out of date non-LTS Java versions?

[Yoann Rodiere]

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 at hibernate.org


On Wed, 13 Feb 2019 at 03:47, Sanne Grinovero <sanne at hibernate.org> 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 out of date.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
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