4 ms·

I think you have it slightly wrong. LTS is not a thing inherent to the language or to OpenJDK, it is a thing that a vendor provides. It is separate from from

I think you have it slightly wrong. LTS is not a thing inherent to the language or to OpenJDK, it is a thing that a vendor provides. It is separate from from "update" releases that Corretto and AdoptOpenJDK provide. pron98 (pron on HN I believe) who works on the JDK at Oracle explains it better here: https://www.reddit.com/r/java/comments/i5zyyk/wtf_does_lts_even_mean_ffs/g0so60h/?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/java/comments/i5zyyk/wtf_does_lts_e...

twic 6y ago
It's true that I'm using "LTS" very sloppily. Last time I looked into this in depth, it wasn't at all clear how community/third-party maintenance of old versions was going to be handled. It still isn't entirely clear. It's certainly true that "LTS" is not an official thing for OpenJDK or Oracle. But if Red Hat is doing LTS for 11, and are upstreaming their patches to the OpenJDK updates repo, then LTS is a thing in practice. Even if AdoptOpenJDK aren't doing any backporting, just building OpenJDK, that's functionally an LTS. The comment you link to is astoundingly bad, given who it's from. In particular: > The safest, easiest approach is to use the current JDK. You get a well-maintained JDK and never have to do another major upgrade. No, you may have to do a major upgrade every six months.
- pgwhalen 6y ago
  > No, you may have to do a major upgrade every six months. I think the point is that it's not a major upgrade. There hasn't been a major upgrade since 9, and there won't be going forward. It's similar to Go in that sense, where it's very easy to upgrade to the latest version, and older versions are only supported for a year.
  - twic 6y ago
    The 9 -> 10 -> 11 upgrades are allowed to make breaking changes. I have apps running on 11 that i can't upgrade further without significant work, because there are things that were retired in 12. To me, that means those changes are major upgrades. pron's article says that there are no major releases, only feature releases, and that may well be the terminology the project uses, but that terminology is pure mendacity.

twic 6y ago

It's true that I'm using "LTS" very sloppily. Last time I looked into this in depth, it wasn't at all clear how community/third-party maintenance of old versions was going to be handled. It still isn't entirely clear. It's certainly true that "LTS" is not an official thing for OpenJDK or Oracle. But if Red Hat is doing LTS for 11, and are upstreaming their patches to the OpenJDK updates repo, then LTS is a thing in practice. Even if AdoptOpenJDK aren't doing any backporting, just building OpenJDK, that's functionally an LTS. The comment you link to is astoundingly bad, given who it's from. In particular: > The safest, easiest approach is to use the current JDK. You get a well-maintained JDK and never have to do another major upgrade. No, you may have to do a major upgrade every six months.

pgwhalen 6y ago
> No, you may have to do a major upgrade every six months. I think the point is that it's not a major upgrade. There hasn't been a major upgrade since 9, and there won't be going forward. It's similar to Go in that sense, where it's very easy to upgrade to the latest version, and older versions are only supported for a year.
- twic 6y ago
  The 9 -> 10 -> 11 upgrades are allowed to make breaking changes. I have apps running on 11 that i can't upgrade further without significant work, because there are things that were retired in 12. To me, that means those changes are major upgrades. pron's article says that there are no major releases, only feature releases, and that may well be the terminology the project uses, but that terminology is pure mendacity.