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Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 11:08:01 +0100
From: Vincent Hennebert <vincent.hennebert@anyware-tech.com>
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To: general@xmlgraphics.apache.org
Subject: Re: Going for 1.4 or 1.5 as minimum Java version?
References: <20071008092951.3950.DEV@jeremias-maerki.ch>
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Hi,

Andreas L Delmelle wrote:
> On Oct 17, 2007, at 10:16, Jeremias Maerki wrote:
> 
>> No reactions so far. Interesting. Anyway, based on the user poll, my
>> opinion is to go for Java 1.4 for the moment and reevaluate Java 1.5
>> next summer. I mean I'd love to use generics and java.util.concurrent
>> but I think it is just a bit too soon to drop 1.4.
>>
>> Any objections to that course of action? Should we have a majority
>> decision on whether 1.4 or 1.5 should be the new minimal Java level?
> 
> Not as far as I'm concerned. +1 for staying with 1.4 for the time being.
> 
> Chris is right. We don't really /need/ 1.5 to implement new features. It
> would be more a convenience than a necessity, so has very low priority IMO.
> Should anyone feel compelled to use 1.5, he could always integrate it
> much in the same way the 1.3-1.4 gap has been dealt with (separate build
> targets to be able to build on both versions without too much hassle).

AFAIK you can’t produce 1.4-compatible bytecode if the source code has 
the new features introduced in 1.5 (annotations, generics, type-safe 
enums). So that would be nearly useless to maintain separate branches, 
as the 1.5 one would only allow to use classes from the standard library 
which aren’t available in 1.4. And we can actually live without those 
classes.

Granted, 1.5 features are more a convenience than a necessity, but they 
are so much more convenient...

Ok, I’m repeating myself, shutting up now.
Vincent

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