[wildfly-dev] Moving WildFly 9 to Java 8?

[Tomaž Cerar]

Hi folks,

we agreed that WildFly 10+ is going to require Java 8, given that its
release date is planned well after JDK7 will be EOL-ed. [1]

Looking at all discussion and new projects / components already require
JDK8 (Eltryon, new WildFly client, Weld 3,...) for development.
I was wondering if we could move WildFly 9 to Java 8 as well?

According to current release plan WF9 should be release around the same
time JDK7 is EOL-ed (April 2015) [1]

Pros of moving to JDK8 early:
- components can use JDK8 eariler --> better testing
- supporting JDK9 will be easier (-XX:MaxPermSize fails to start JVM on 9)
- support for TLS SNI (think of it as virtual hosts for SSL)
- better ciphers and many other security related improvements
- nashorn (fast javascript engine)
- better concurrency libs
- easier testing, one less JDK combo to test on CI

and of course all of the language improvements, lambda ftw!

Cons of moving early

- back porting of code could be impaired
- there is currently no non beta release of IBM JDK8

There are probably other pros & cons but in general I think it would be
better to upgrade early as there will be many
hidden issues with new Java 8 features people want to use but are server
doesn't understand currently, mostly here
are features like enhanced type annotations and default methods.

This problem are and will creep up more and more often as adoption of Java
8 is quite good already [2] and still rising.

so what do you guys think? Should we move for WildFly or should we wait for
10 as planned?

--
tomaz


[1] http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/eol-135779.html
[2] http://jaxenter.com/java-2-111936.html
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