[ome-devel] Removal of support for Java 5 and Matlab 2007a and earlier in all future releases

[Roger Leigh]

Dear all,

Support for Java 5 will be dropped for all upcoming Bio-Formats and
OMERO releases; Java 6 or higher will be required.  This will include
the stable 4.4.9 release and the 5.0.0-Beta2 release.  Support for
Matlab releases 2007a and earlier, which use Java 5, will also be
dropped; version 2007b or higher will be required.

Note that Java 5 has had no public updates since April 2008, and was
end of life in October 2009¹.  In particular, please be aware that it
no longer has security updates.  Users of systems such as RHEL5/CentOS5
which default to using Java 5 can download Java 7 packages from Oracle².
  Users of older versions of ImageJ can download an updated ImageJ which
provides Java 6³.

We would be interested in hearing feedback if you are in a situation
where it is not possible to upgrade to a more recent version of Java,
and this change will cause problems.  In particular, it would be
useful to have the details of the system you are using.


Regards,
Roger Leigh


1. http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/eol-135779.html
2. http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html
3. http://imagej.nih.gov/ij/download.html

--
Dr Roger Leigh -- Open Microscopy Environment
Wellcome Trust Centre for Gene Regulation and Expression,
College of Life Sciences, University of Dundee, Dow Street,
Dundee DD1 5EH Scotland UK   Tel: (01382) 386364

The University of Dundee is a registered Scottish Charity, No: SC015096