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

Stephen Colebourne scolebourne at joda.org
Thu May 10 22:31:51 UTC 2018

On 10 May 2018 at 18:56, joe darcy <joe.darcy at oracle.com> wrote:

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.

This would cause me personally a fair bit of pain, as I have projects that are based on Java 6 using the release flag that cannot be upgraded to Java 7 or 8. Currently, the release flag allows me to use the latest Java compiler to perform a release with module-info, yet still produce a jar file compatible with Java 6. Without this flag I would have to use an older compiler (Java 10 I suppose) even when that version is supposed to be obsolete.

On 10 May 2018 at 23:26, Emmanuel Bourg <ebourg at apache.org> wrote:

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.

This seems like a better approach. For me personally, I could keep using the LTS Java 11 to build Java 6 files for the next 3 years, which is better than having to use an unpatched insecure Java 10 JDK. And I don't think I'd object to support for 6 being dropped in 12 either.

Stephen

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