Proposed implementation of JEP 182 in JDK 11: drop javac support for -source/-target/--release 6

[Emmanuel Bourg]

Le 11/05/2018 à 19:19, joe darcy a écrit :

> In example, the LTS release of JDK 18 would support 18, 17, 16, 15, 14,
> 13, 12, 11 (LTS), 8 (effectively a LTS) with 9 and 10 *not* being
> supported.

Dropping the older non LTS releases is less of an issue. I'd suggest
adjusting the source/target/release value automatically with a warning
to the next supported version to avoid breaking the old projects
targeting them.

Supporting only two LTS releases back, spanning 6 years with the new
release cadence, feels a bit short compared to the 16 years we enjoyed
with Java 8. That was quite a lot, and the level 1.2 and 1.3 were
probably not much used at this point, but 1.4 was still commonly found
in the wild. Supporting three LTS back would be less radical and more in
line with the backward support we experienced since Java 6.

Emmanuel Bourg