Java 8 compatibility

[Charles Beyer]

To add data to the point I think Stefan is trying to make, I refrained from
starting a Truffle/Graal project recently because of this bad first
impression.

It was a yellow flag that I needed an old JDK7 installed but a red flag
that I need an old JDK8.  Also, I needed a different version of JDK8 for
IGV than for building graal - another red flag.

With a software system this complex, a big part in evaluating its use (for
me) is trying to measure how professional the development team behind the
project is.  Things like test coverage and how much technical debt has
accumulated in the build system is a natural measure of that.  The current
dependency requirements didn't leave me with a warm fuzzy feeling.

That aside, I'm very excited about where the project is going so don't take
this as trolling.  Rather, I just decided to wait until the JDK8 dependency
issue is resolved.

-Charles


On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 6:55 AM, Stefan Marr <java at stefan-marr.de> wrote:

> Hi Thomas:
>
> > On 04 Apr 2015, at 15:15, Thomas Wuerthinger <
> thomas.wuerthinger at oracle.com> wrote:
> >
> > The mx tool and its related requirements (i.e., a Java 7 and a Java 8
> version installed) are only relevant for Graal developers. Graal users and
> Truffle language developers do not have any exposure to this implementation
> detail and can use binaries provided either by third parties [1] or via the
> Oracle technology network [2].
>
> Perhaps, that’s a cultural clash here.
> I understand Graal and Truffle as open source projects.
> And, as such, the source is the relevant artifact. Making it easy to build
> for users seems to me something very worthwhile.
>
> So far, I only heard arguments I cannot really follow, because I don’t see
> why the requirements for a release build should make building on a user
> machine harder.
>
> But specifically, for my situation, I can’t just point to prebuilt
> binaries for all platforms. While I didn’t have to patch Graal for the last
> paper, at some point in the paper writing process, I selected a specific
> version of Graal. One that worked well, because bugs were fixed. But, it is
> one between releases, so there is no binary. And, later changes to Truffle
> would require re-testing, and perhaps changes to my experiments. So, using
> a later release might or might not work.
>
>
> > We are happy to assist academic artefact evaluation committee members in
> case they run into issues when building Graal from its sources.
>
> Unfortunately, that’s not how it works. If they can’t build it, they’ll
> fall back to the provided binaries (in this case they got a VirtualBox
> image with everything prebuilt).
>
> But, the problem here is actually one you should be worried about: it is a
> bad first impression. If the reviewers where thinking of further looking
> into Graal/Truffle, they might get discouraged by not being able to build
> it easily.
>
> So, let me restate the question: Would you accept patches that makes it
> possible to build Graal/Truffle with a single specific version of JDK8 that
> works?
>
> Best regards
> Stefan
>
>
> --
> Stefan Marr
> INRIA Lille - Nord Europe
> http://stefan-marr.de/research/
>
>
>
>


-- 
Charles Beyer,
cjbeyer at gmail.com
Seattle, WA