On ecj and @Override annotations for interface methods

[Andrew John Hughes]

2008/9/18 Ismael Juma <mlists at juma.me.uk>:
> C. K. Jester-Young <cky944 at ...> writes:
>> I guess my question is, how long do we expect to continue supporting
>> pre-1.6 ecjs, given more and more usage of @Override in jdk7? i.e., is
>> the @Override-stripping a stopgap measure, or is this a long-term thing?
>
> To help along, in case people are not aware of the versions involved, here is
> some information.
>
> The bug regarding the change for while using 1.6 target is:
>
> https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=141931
>
> It was part of the 3.2.2 release (3.2.0 was released in June 2006 and the
> maintenance update 3.2.2 around March 2007).
>
> They also recently changed the behaviour for the 1.5 target:
>
> https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=167262
>
> That change was backported to the 3.3 branch, but it seems like it just missed
> the 3.3.2 release. In other words, it's only available in 3.4.0 in eclipse.org
> releases. 3.4.0 was released in June 2008.
>
> Hope this helps,
> Ismael
>
>

Yes, it does help.  I was aware of the history of the change as you
list it for 1.5
(and thus the conclusion that it being in 3.4 was far too late).  I
didn't realise
support was there for the 1.6 target as early as 3.2.2.  This might make it
acceptable to just switch.

Does anyone recall why we stopped using 1.6, other than, as a target, it gives
little benefits?  Lillian made this commit:

2008-05-20  Lillian Angel  <langel at redhat.com>

	* Makefile.am: Updated JAVAC calls so ecj wrapper script is used.
        * Makefile.in: Regenerated.
	* aclocal.m4: Likewise.
	* configure: Likewise.
	* javac.in: Updated to use source 1.6 instead of 1.5.

which I don't know the reasoning behind (it also changed the behaviour so
that javac.in was always used in ecj builds, slowing things down if the
system ecj was native).  mjw then reverted us back to 1.5:

2008-05-25  Mark Wielaard  <mark at klomp.org>

	* Makefile.am: Use -source 1.5 whenever possible.
        * Makefile.in: Regenerated.
	* javac.in: Use -1.5.

Debian stable's version would be too old (3.2.1) but we don't support this
fully anyway, and stable will soon change to lenny, which I presume
will have a newer version.
-- 
Andrew :-)

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