Re: [epp-dev] Minimum BREE for EPP Neon

[Eric Rizzo <eclipse-mail@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm not an EPP package maintainer or committer, but I'd like to provide some user-community perspective on this.
Java 8 is just over 1 year old, and it's well known that many people and (especially) corporations are slow to adopt new versions. If Eclipse packages were to require Java 8, I can pretty much guarantee, based on many years' experience supporting the community, that there will be many complaints and confused users. In fact, in a corporate environment where users literally can not update their own workstations, I'd say it's highly likely that users would be unable to use Neon, or at least have to jump through corporate IT hoops to get it working.

I'm not knocking Java 8 (at least not here), I'm just trying to keep everyone focused on the users. Just because we, as tool developers, are enamored and in love with the latest toys doesn't mean we can justify pushing them down the throats of our large user base.

Eric

Lars Vogel

July 30, 2015 1:52 PM

Hi,

I noticed yesterday that m2e moved to Java 8, which triggered this
request. I contacted Markus Knauer and he suggested that I should send
an email to this list to trigger the discussion about BREE for the
EPP's in Neon.

I personally think it would be great to require Java 8 as BREE for the
EPP out of the following reasons:

- Java 7 is out of public maintenance
- if the EPP's decide early that they will require Java 8, other
project will have the option to improve their code base based on Java
8
- if m2e requires Java 8, AFAIK this would bump the most important
EPP's also to Java 8.

In Platform UI I would also like to support the Java 8 Date and Time
API via Databinding, which would also bump platform to Java 8. This is
not yet implement but on our roadmap. AFAIK the Jetty webserver also
requires Java 8, which would result in a bump in the Eclipse Help
system to Java 8.

Best regards, Lars

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