Opinion Poll: - JDOM2 and minimum-required Java - Java5 or Java6
Rolf <[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.comp.java.jdom.general |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
Hi all. When I started with JDOM2 I discussed with Jason whether we should target a minimum supported version of Java5 or Java6. At the time I put together a list of Java6 features I thought could be remotely useful: - JAXB 2.0 including StAX interfaces (we could have a StAXOutputter, etc.) - Deque - ContentList/AttributeList could/should be a Deque too - making ContentList.removeLast() possible, etc. Those were just off-the-cuff examples of what could be useful. I don't think that the ContentList/AttributeLists should be Deques... not now, anyway. Based on that we decided Java5 was still a reasonable target, unless something came up. My biggest concern is that if we introduce JDOM2 as supporting Java5 then we will have to support Java5 for a long time, introducing a testing dependency, and potentially curtailing future options... and Java5 itself has been unsupported for years.... Also, as it happens, I have inadvertently (out of habit) used an ArrayDeque in the DescendantIterator code as a Stack. It could be easily replaced with some other collections structure. What has brought this issue to a head though is that I have been working on some StAX code, and this is fairly well entrenched in Java6. Support for it on Java5 is not nice to add (need to download special jars, etc.). It can be done, but is a mess. Further, I have been looking at outputting to an XMLStreamWriter, and the support for that would be useful to add to the XMLOutputter class... and requiring an additional hard-to-get jar for that would be a real drawback.... we may as well just declare it to require Java6. So, as a poll: * Does anyone have a realistic need to run a future JDOM2 on Java5? * If so, could you add additional jars to your classpath just to make JDOM2 work? * Any comments, suggestions. Currently I feel that it is reasonable to set Java6 as a minumum and not even bother trying to think about Java5 issues... anyone disagree? Rolf _______________________________________________ To control your jdom-interest membership: http://www.jdom.org/mailman/options/jdom-interest/[email protected]