Proposed implementation of JEP 182 in JDK 11: drop javac support for -source/-target/--release 6 (original) (raw)

Emmanuel Bourg ebourg at apache.org
Thu May 10 22:26:45 UTC 2018

Le 10/05/2018 à 19:56, joe.darcy at oracle.com (joe darcy) a écrit :

Given the age of JDK 6, I think it is reasonable in 2018 for JDK 11 to drop support for -source/-target/--release 1.6/6, leaving support for 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11. This provides support for four rather than three older versions in JDK 11, but better matches the time span of releases discussed in the JEP.

The short lived releases don't really matter in this context, most developers just skip them and aim for the LTS releases. I think the JEP 182 policy should be translated to "one + 3 LTS back", so for Java 11 that would mean supporting 6, 7, 8, (9, 10), and 11. With this logic the next Java 17 LTS would support 7, 8, (9, 10), 11, (12, 13, 14, 15, 16), and 17. I suggest dropping the oldest version in the release immediately following the newest LTS (so Java 6 support would be removed in JDK 12, and Java 7 support would go away in JDK 18).

Emmanuel Bourg

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