5 ms·

Why Java 8 and now directly 11 or 12? 8 is already at the end

bad_user 8y ago
Java 8 is "at the end" according to whom? Also note that 9 and 10 were basically alpha versions. Nobody deployed 9 and 10. And 12 will probably have the same fate.
- awild 8y ago
  It was eol-ed this January for commercial use.
  - dikei 8y ago
    That's for Oracle's build only. OpenJDK 8 is alive and well, with Red Hat leading the supports.
Freak_NL 8y ago
We are at JDK 8 now too and will move towards the next LTS (JDK 11) near the end of the year. The transition from Java 8 to Java 11 feels more involved than the transition from Java 7 to Java 8 was. Everything seems to work, but a lot of major libraries are still throwing lots of warnings, and to really get the most out of the transition developers and existing codebases should get comfortable with the new module system as well. Moving to a non-LTS release (12) is a non starter of course.
- chipperyman573 8y ago
  >The transition from Java 8 to Java 11 feels more involved than the transition from Java 7 to Java 8 was I don't know a whole lot about Java 7 vs 8 vs 11, but wouldn't that make the most sense? 7->8 is one version upgrade, 7->11 is 4.
  - pilif 8y ago
    9, 10 and 11 are following a new release schedule of timed releases (every 6 months), whereas 8 was still a traditional feature release. I would say that aside of the module system that came with a huge list of now inaccessible internal methods that a lot of dependencies relied on even though they shouldn’t have, there was even more change between 7 and 8 than there was between 8 and 11
    - Freak_NL 8y ago
      Yeah, Oracle changed what one major version upgrade meant from JDK 8 onwards. For production purposes JDK 9 and 10 effectively don't exist.
- tyingq 8y ago
  It's kicking the can a bit, but there's the "--release 8" javac flag you can use in 11.
CamouflagedKiwi 8y ago
There's still a heap of stuff that doesn't work on Java 9+ (for example, we use Apache Flink which is planning support but isn't there yet). Like Python 2, Java 8 will stick around at least until there aren't any blockers for getting off it.
- EdwardDiego 8y ago
  Yep, I'm the same - Spark will be stuck on Java 8 until it is rid of logj12, not sure what log4j1 is doing, but it doesn't work on Java 9 and Spark's Hadoop dependencies are riddled with log4j12. What's nice to see is that that log4j2 team have been helping with the work in the Spark project.
  - garblegarble 8y ago
    >not sure what log4j1 is doing If it's the bug I ran into then their code to detect running on a legacy JVM is tripping with the new JVM version numbers and it thinks that it's running under ancient Java 1.x. It's then saved in the org.apache.log4j.helpers.Loader.java1 field. To migrate some code that needs log4j12 to more recent versions of Java I ended up writing a hack that accesses Loader before log4j uses it and manually sets that field to "false"
tyingq 8y ago
Lots of stodgy Fortune 500's have tons of Java 8 still around. RedHat will deepen those relationships by giving those companies a cheaper path than Oracle for support.

Java 8 is "at the end" according to whom? Also note that 9 and 10 were basically alpha versions. Nobody deployed 9 and 10. And 12 will probably have the same fate.

awild 8y ago
It was eol-ed this January for commercial use.
- dikei 8y ago
  That's for Oracle's build only. OpenJDK 8 is alive and well, with Red Hat leading the supports.

Freak_NL 8y ago

We are at JDK 8 now too and will move towards the next LTS (JDK 11) near the end of the year. The transition from Java 8 to Java 11 feels more involved than the transition from Java 7 to Java 8 was. Everything seems to work, but a lot of major libraries are still throwing lots of warnings, and to really get the most out of the transition developers and existing codebases should get comfortable with the new module system as well. Moving to a non-LTS release (12) is a non starter of course.

chipperyman573 8y ago
>The transition from Java 8 to Java 11 feels more involved than the transition from Java 7 to Java 8 was I don't know a whole lot about Java 7 vs 8 vs 11, but wouldn't that make the most sense? 7->8 is one version upgrade, 7->11 is 4.
- pilif 8y ago
  9, 10 and 11 are following a new release schedule of timed releases (every 6 months), whereas 8 was still a traditional feature release. I would say that aside of the module system that came with a huge list of now inaccessible internal methods that a lot of dependencies relied on even though they shouldn’t have, there was even more change between 7 and 8 than there was between 8 and 11
  - Freak_NL 8y ago
    Yeah, Oracle changed what one major version upgrade meant from JDK 8 onwards. For production purposes JDK 9 and 10 effectively don't exist.
tyingq 8y ago
It's kicking the can a bit, but there's the "--release 8" javac flag you can use in 11.

CamouflagedKiwi 8y ago

There's still a heap of stuff that doesn't work on Java 9+ (for example, we use Apache Flink which is planning support but isn't there yet). Like Python 2, Java 8 will stick around at least until there aren't any blockers for getting off it.

EdwardDiego 8y ago
Yep, I'm the same - Spark will be stuck on Java 8 until it is rid of logj12, not sure what log4j1 is doing, but it doesn't work on Java 9 and Spark's Hadoop dependencies are riddled with log4j12. What's nice to see is that that log4j2 team have been helping with the work in the Spark project.
- garblegarble 8y ago
  >not sure what log4j1 is doing If it's the bug I ran into then their code to detect running on a legacy JVM is tripping with the new JVM version numbers and it thinks that it's running under ancient Java 1.x. It's then saved in the org.apache.log4j.helpers.Loader.java1 field. To migrate some code that needs log4j12 to more recent versions of Java I ended up writing a hack that accesses Loader before log4j uses it and manually sets that field to "false"

tyingq 8y ago

Lots of stodgy Fortune 500's have tons of Java 8 still around. RedHat will deepen those relationships by giving those companies a cheaper path than Oracle for support.