[hibernate-dev] Should we support out of date non-LTS Java versions?

[Steve Ebersole]

+1 to everything Yoann said.


On Wed, Feb 13, 2019, 5:42 AM Yoann Rodiere <yoann at hibernate.org> wrote:

> 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 out of date.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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> > hibernate-dev at lists.jboss.org
> > https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/hibernate-dev
> >
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