[jdom-interest] Java 1.5 language features.

Mattias Jiderhamn mj-lists at expertsystems.se
Mon Feb 26 00:15:29 PST 2007


When this was discussed on the mailing list a couple of months ago, the
"conclusion" was to release 1.01 first, then create a JDOM 1.5 with
generics but no other features added, so that it will be a drop in
upgrade for JDK 1.5 users. After that, future features could be added in
a JDOM 2.0 which requires Java 1.5.

Since JDOM 1.0 is pretty stable, I think that is a good plan.
Although we are still awaiting the first step...


-------- Ursprungligt meddelande --------
Ämne: Re:[jdom-interest] Java 1.5 language features.
Från: Talden <talden at gmail.com>
Till: Jason Hunter <jhunter at servlets.com>
Datum: 2007-02-26 03:08
> I should qualify this.  I say this in the context of JDOM because it's
> API is highly stable and there appears to be relatively low exposure
> to feature creep incurring high maintenance overhead of two versions.
>
> Of course I'd hope that, with the Java6 release that the momentum of
> developers moving to Java5 increases to the point that support for 1.4
> can be given a firm end-of-life for many projects.  There are very few
> arguments for staying with 1.4 as most of the tool and server vendors
> have already moved to Java5.  JDOM is potentially one of those
> arguments.
>
> -- 
> Aaron
>
> On 2/26/07, Talden <talden at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Or you release a new version with generics and introduce maintenance
>> builds for the 1.4 supporting version when and if bugs need to be
>> fixed.  You can't wait for an entire user.base to move on - there are
>> still people using 1.1.x after all.
>>
>> NB: @SuppressWarnings really should be the exception rather than the
>> rule (EG filling in those edge cases where Suns partial generics
>> implementation shows its gaps).  I wouldn't want to have to pepper the
>> code with suppression for every touch point where we use JDOM.
>>
>> -- 
>> Talden
>>
>> On 2/26/07, Jason Hunter <jhunter at servlets.com> wrote:
>> > Michael Kay wrote:
>> > >> Is there any effort being placed towards introducing Java 1.5
>> > >> language features into the JDOM API?
>> > >
>> > > I've got the same issue with Saxon. I would love to introduce
>> generics into
>> > > the API, but there are still too many users on 1.4 who can't be
>> left behind.
>> > >
>> > > At the moment with Saxon I'm thinking of introducing a 1.5 API
>> that uses
>> > > generics, to sit alongside the 1.4 API. I'm also thinking of
>> sitting it out
>> > > and waiting until 1.4 is no longer a requirement. It's not easy
>> to decide
>> > > between these two options, and the same applies I'm sure to JDOM.
>> >
>> > Exactly.  You either drop support for Java 1.4 (that's premature I
>> think
>> > still), skip features introduced in Java 1.5 (the present course of
>> > action), or produce two JARs (a potential source of subtle bugs).
>> >
>> > It's indeed unfortunate that the warnings are so prevalent in Java
>> 1.5,
>> > especially for code patterns that in Java 1.4 are the best code
>> possible
>> > to write.  They provided us with @SuppressWarnings, but of course that
>> > requires Java 1.5.
>> >
>> > -jh-
>> > 



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