FYI, planning to drop support for -source/-target/--release 7 from javac in JDK 20

[Joseph D. Darcy]

Catching up on email, as hinted at in a comment on the JBS issue for JEP 
182,

https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-8046172?focusedCommentId=14145783&page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel#comment-14145783

it is possible --release could in the future support a sparse set of 
values. For example, something like:

8, 11, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, ...

Future discussion to follow at some point...

-Joe

On 9/22/2022 10:00 AM, Liam Miller-Cushon wrote:
> > JDK 7 was released in July 2011, over one decade ago. Per the 
> general sentiment, but not exact wording, of JEP 182
>
> Would you be willing to provide any hints about what the future update 
> to JEP 182 might look like? Is the sentiment behind JEP 182 that 
> language levels will continue to be turned down roughly ten years 
> after they were originally released, and so support for targeting Java 
> 8 might be removed around 2024?
>
> By way of an experience report on JDK-8173605, I'm seeing roughly ten 
> times more usage of '-source 7 -target 7' than there was of '-source 6 
> -target 6' when it was turned down. So far most of those uses don't 
> seem to be necessary anymore, but there are a few where it's not 
> clear. So it's been a more invasive breaking change than JDK-8028563 was.
>
> On Tue, Aug 30, 2022 at 7:20 AM Brian Goetz <brian.goetz at oracle.com> 
> wrote:
>
>
>     > The only problem i see is that the compiler plugin of Maven
>     still use 1.7 as default.
>
>     This is kind of bizarre, though.  Java 7 went to "end of public
>     updates"
>     in 2015.  You would think that would be the trigger for Maven to
>     update
>     their defaults?  Or maybe, as the release model is evolved, they
>     could
>     pick a policy of "default to the newest/oldest LTS"?
>
>
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