[ome-devel] Opinions on Java 5

[Chris Allan]

On Thu, Aug 18, 2005 at 08:08:23AM -0400, Erik Brauner wrote:
> Josh, could you elucidate the difficulties with OS X 10.4 please.

OS X 10.4 does not ship with a Java 5 JDK, it ships with a 1.3 JDK and
a 1.4 JDK. The Java 5 JDK for OS X 10.4 is currently a seperate download
and requires a tiny bit of tweaking to be made the default (we're
currently using it for our development). You can find more information
about the state of the Java 5 JDK and Java on OS X in general here:

http://developer.apple.com/java/faq/

OS X 10.4 has its share of oddities on the development front the most
significant being GCC 4.

> 
> We are in the process of upgrading to Tiger partially because of the 
> Java 1.5/Tomcat 5 incompatibility so I'm curious.
> Assuming that OS X development isn't an issue, then I personally 
> wouldn't have  a problem with using Java 1.5.
> I think they did a great job of choosing new features (the new looping 
> syntax is worth the price of admission IMHO).
> The big catch is we would probably want to avoid 1.5 dependencies in 
> anything that might end up client side as I don't
> see browser support coming too quickly.

There are a significant amount of server side things that Tomcat 5.5
relies on that must be pre-compiled with a 1.4 JDK anyway (not by us but
by the Tomcat maintainers) because of the new "enum" reserved word, etc.

So, I think we will definitely not want a Java 1.5 reqirement on the
client side just yet. That said, if you're on Windows you cannot get
security or bugfix automatic updates for 1.4 anymore anyway. :)

> 
> -Erik

Ciao.

-Chris