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Message-ID: <44933FD7.2080105@yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 00:33:43 +0100
From: markharw00d <markharw00d@yahoo.co.uk>
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To: java-dev@lucene.apache.org
Subject: Re: Results (Re: Survey: Lucene and Java 1.4 vs. 1.5)
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 >1.5 IS the Java version that the majority Lucene users use, not 1.4!
 >Does this mean we can now start accepting 1.5 code?

This isn't simply about which JVM gets used the most wins.
This is about "how many Lucene users will we inconvenience or lose by 
moving to 1.5?"

Right now the survey sample tells me roughly a third which doesn't seem 
like a good thing. Maybe the question is more usefully "who can't/won't 
move to 1.5 in the immediate future?"

I believe we shouldn't select the minimum platform based on the coding 
convenience it may offer us which seems to be the major objective behind 
1.5 adoption. When developing a library deployed in many 
applications/environments over which you have no control and where 
careful consideration of runtime performance not coding 
convenience/speed of development is the primary concern my preference 
would be to choose 1.4.

Not all deployment environments can be upgraded easily. Take my current 
application at work. It's applet-based and rolled out to hundreds of 
corporate desktops which are stuck on 1.4 (this won't change anytime 
soon). Lucene isn't on the client but all client and server code in the 
app has been written in 1.4 to avoid any issues of any 1.5 code leaking 
onto the 1.4 client. All of the many 3rd party libraries in use (Spring, 
database drivers  etc) are 1.4 compatible in their latest versions. I'd 
like to stick with the latest Lucene codebase but mandating 1.5 for 
Lucene would introduce a code management headache to this app with the 
mixed JVMs

Unless there are *really* good runtime benefits that are solely based on 
1.5 libraries or source code I would prefer to see Lucene stick with 1.4 
as a base rather than limit Lucene's deployment options simply because 
of  code-time benefits the new 1.5 syntax offers.
I see that the Spring framework recognise this dilemma and still seek to 
support as far back as 1.3 (see http://www.springframework.org/node/220).

Simon said "everyone should download 1.5". It's nice to think you can 
accelerate the global adoption of 1.5 by changing projects like Lucene 
but the reality is corporates do not change platforms overnight because 
of such a change.

That's a long-winded way of saying "-1" unless I hear of any arguments 
which are based on something much more substantial than "1.5 makes 
coding easier".

Cheers,
Mark


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