[Laszlo-dev] considering dropping support for java 1.4 - opinions?

[Jim Grandy]

But none of this will be useful for OL4, since we aren't going to be  
writing a lot of new Java code in the remainder of this cycle. That  
argues for deferring this until post-OL4, when we can deliver  
features in exchange for the features we remove :-)

jim

On Jan 22, 2007, at 3:42 PM, Benjamin Shine wrote:

>
> The point of de-supporting java 1.4 is to be able to use nice java  
> 1.5 language features. Once you use type-safe parameterized  
> collection types (ie List<String>) you'll never go back. Once you  
> use a for-in loop instead of a farging iterator with casting (for  
> String s; myStrings) you'll never go back.  Real enumerated types.  
> Autoboxing and unboxing. varargs. printf. It makes it more like one  
> of the languages we like -- python, ruby, javascript.
>
> There are real language features here that will help us write  
> cleaner code. I miss them on a daily basis when in compiler and css  
> code, and they were very helpful writing the performance analysis.  
> Take a look at http://svn.openlaszlo.org/tools/trunk/performance/ 
> src/org/openlaszlo/perf/Main.java and look for the angle brackets :)
>
>
>
> On Jan 22, 2007, at 3:28 PM, Max Carlson wrote:
>
>> I'd prefer to give folks the option of deploying on 1.4 and 1.5.   
>> I think that's more important than supporting 1.6, at least in the  
>> near term.
>>
>> Benjamin Shine wrote:
>>> We're considering dropping support for java 1.4. Right now we  
>>> recommend java 1.5, but we haven't done anything to the servlet  
>>> and compiler that requires java 1.5. (There is some use of java  
>>> 1.5 in the documentation tools and performance analysis tools.)  
>>> This would be just for OL4 and later, not for the 3.x work.
>>> Is anyone stuck in a java 1.4 environment who would want to be  
>>> able to deploy OL4 and future releases? Would anyone mind if we  
>>> dropped support for java 1.4? Does anyone even know of real  
>>> deployments in the world which could not update to java 1.5?
>>> (I have been experimenting with java 1.6 and so far it seems to  
>>> work, but it will be a while before we can really call it  
>>> "supported.")
>>> -ben
>>
>> -- 
>> Regards,
>> Max Carlson
>> OpenLaszlo.org
>