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Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2008 09:02:12 +0200
From: Rob Walker <robw@ascert.com>
Organization: Ascert LLC
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To: dev@felix.apache.org
Subject: Re: Do we have a JDK rev policy ?
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Marcel

Thanks for the clarification and fix. That is an interesting observation 
on 1.4 EOL and it's implication for support.

-- Rob

Marcel Offermans wrote:
> On Oct 15, 2008, at 7:41 , Rob Walker wrote:
>
>> Noticed that when trying to build under 1.4, I got the following 
>> compile error:
>>
>>    symbol  : method signum (long)
>>    location: class java.lang.Math
>>
>> I think this method is from 1.5 onwards [...]
>>
>> I know 1.4 is quite old, but we still try and keep compatibility to 
>> it. I think for the above case we'll be fine in fact, since it occurs 
>> in DM - which we don't currently use. We're also debating mandating a 
>> later JDK version for our App too - so again, it may not be an issue.
>
> It's actually in the optional shell command for the DM, however it was 
> my intention to keep that bundle 1.4 compatible, so I just committed a 
> small fix for that.
>
>> Just wondering if we have a "JDK level" policy in terms of what Felix 
>> and bundles should be buildable/runnable against.
>> Just thought I'd query if we have an official policy on Felix.
>
> We have a policy (although it might not be written down anywhere) to 
> keep the core framework compatible with basically 1.4 (or rather the 
> foundation profile). All other bundles can pretty much do what they like.
>
> It is an interesting question though how long we, or rather the OSGi 
> Alliance, wants to maintain a specification that's based on a JDK 
> version that is no longer supported by Sun[1]: the actual End Of Life 
> for 1.4 is the 30th of this month. Of course, the spec is based on the 
> JDK spec, not implementation, but I guess it will become harder to 
> find platforms and tools that will actually still run 1.4 outside of 
> maybe the embedded space. Luckily they defined execution environments, 
> can be run on top of Java 5 (which EOL's a year from now) and 6 too.
>
> Greetings, Marcel
>
> [1] http://java.sun.com/products/archive/eol.policy.html
>

-- 


Ascert - Taking systems to the Edge
robw@ascert.com
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