RFR: JDK-8200083: Bump bootjdk requirement for JDK 11 to JDK 10 (original) (raw)

Martin Buchholz martinrb at google.com
Fri Mar 23 18:09:42 UTC 2018

On Thu, Mar 22, 2018 at 8:13 AM, Jonathan Gibbons < jonathan.gibbons at oracle.com> wrote:

The interim JDK relies on javac and related tools being compilable by the boot JDK. This imposes a restriction that the source code of those tools must be conformant to the source version supported by the boot JDK, meaning no use of any newer features. The javac team have always lived with and accepted the N-1 restriction that this imposes. With a more rapid cadence, it might be appropriate to revisit the N-1 rule. But since a "last LTS" rule may imply N-5 or N-6 or so, that seems like too much.

Historically, major java releases came out about once every 3 years, which aligns pretty well with a "last LTS" rule.

Non-LTS releases such as jdk9 see cascading lack of support and hence lack of adoption - your OS vendor may be reluctant to ship such a jdk.

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