[jdom-interest] Java 1.5 language features.

[Mattias Jiderhamn]

Jason wrote:
> Talden wrote:
>> Is there work going on now (not yet released) that would make
>> introducing a 2.0 (Java 5 + required) and maintaining the old 1.0
>> (Java 1.4) a difficult endeavor?  Is there an issue with officially
>> marking the 1.4 support as 'maintenance only'?
>
> What happens when Software A uses JDOM 2.0 while Software B uses JDOM
> 1.0, and you want to write Software C that uses both Software A and
> Software B?  Can you just drop in JDOM 2.0, ignore JDOM 1.0, and have
> Software B (built maybe against an old version of Java) satisfied?
> Anyone have experience with this?
This problem isn't specific to JDOM. I think the suggested solution over
at Jakarta Commons is that when the binary backwards compatibility
breaks, the package name changes (i.e. org.jdom2.*).
(And remember you don't have to introduce Java 5 to break compatibility,
just change a methods signature or remove it altogether)

As discussed previously on this list, adding generics but no other new
features should be backwards compatible with APIs requiring JDOM 1.0,
just like the generified java.util.* collections in JDK 1.5 are
backwards compatible with older APIs.