[External] : Re: Minimum JDK policy for OpenJFX

[Kevin Rushforth]

You raise a good point about whether or not it should matter if a 
version is (generally considered to be) an LTS release. I wasn't 
suggesting that we necessarily wait until the next LTS to consider 
picking up an important new feature, just that it could be one factor. I 
also would be very interested to hear from Gluon on this point.

Your second point is the more interesting one. It comes down to the 
question of when is there a new feature (or set of new features) that is 
compelling enough that we want to require that version of the JDK in 
order to be able to use it.

So for this specific discussion: Is there any language feature or API in 
JDK 12 - 16 that is compelling enough that we would want to bump the JDK 
in order to be able to use it?

-- Kevin


On 5/18/2021 2:42 PM, Nir Lisker wrote:
>
>     there are some advantages in being able to run with the latest JDK LTS
>
>
> One *potential* issue with this approach is that LTS is not defined in 
> OpenJDK as far as I know. The LTS versions are a business decision of 
> each distributor. For now, they have all aligned on 8, 11, 17, but 
> nothing guarantees that this will stay so. What if different vendors 
> LTS different versions? Suppose that Valhalla and Loom add very 
> attractive features in JDK 19 (big performance enhancements, leads to 
> big money savings on hardware, leads to economic incentives to use 
> these, leads to requests to support these), now vendors can declare 
> JDK 19 as LTS, and what will JavaFX do?
> In OpenJDK all versions are treated equally as it is a spec and not a 
> business model. Should JavaFX be coupled to business models? Maybe 
> Gluon has some insights since they give JavaFX LTS support.
>
> A second point, as Michael Strauß mentioned, is that maybe we should 
> see what features are going to be delivered in the next versions and 
> judge if there's something attractive enough for library developers to 
> base our decision on. Sealed classes from Amber are certainly one of 
> them. Panama might provide handy features for JavaFX's interfacing 
> with native code, like Foreign Memory Access, though I didn't look 
> into it in detail. Valhalla is certainly too far away to consider, and 
> Loom is rather irrelevant for JavaFX and GUIs in general.
> If anyone has insights into relevant upcoming features I'll be happy 
> to learn.
>
> - Nir
>
> On Tue, May 18, 2021 at 6:17 PM Kevin Rushforth 
> <kevin.rushforth at oracle.com <mailto:kevin.rushforth at oracle.com>> wrote:
>
>     A very timely question. I was already planning to raise this as a
>     discussion after we update our boot JDK to JDK 16 (blocked by the
>     in-progress gradle 7 update), which I hope to do later this week.
>
>     I think that this is the right time to consider bumping the minimum
>     required version to run JavaFX 17 to JDK 16, which would allow us to
>     start using APIs and language features from JDK 12 through JDK 16
>     inclusive.
>
>     In general, we only guarantee that JavaFX N runs on JDK N-1 or
>     later. In
>     practice, though, we don't bump it for each release, as there are
>     some
>     advantages in being able to run with the latest JDK LTS. Since
>     JavaFX 17
>     will release at roughly the same time as JDK 17 LTS, I can't think
>     of a
>     good reason to not update our minimum.
>
>     Comments?
>
>     -- Kevin
>
>
>     On 5/18/2021 7:59 AM, Michael Strauß wrote:
>     > Currently, JDK 11 is required for the latest version of OpenJFX.
>     What
>     > is the policy for bumping this requirement? Does it always
>     correspond
>     > to the latest JDK LTS release (the next of which will be JDK 17), or
>     > is it independent from the release cycle of OpenJDK?
>