[External] : Re: Proposal: Bump minimum JDK version for JavaFX 20 to JDK 17

[Kevin Rushforth]

There was a desire by some developers to keep JavaFX runnable with the 
most recent LTS of the JDK. I think it might be a harder sell to bump 
the minimum to 18. I'd love to hear from more developers on this.

Regarding code snippets, as long as it doesn't break the build if we use 
them, I don't see why we can't start doing that (e.g., if the build 
fails with "unknown tag" or similar, that would be bad). We will produce 
any docs that we build and deliver using JDK 18 for now, and JDK 19 when 
we update the build to that (even though the minimum would remain at 17).

As for future version bumps, my thinking is that we would do it at least 
after the next LTS or whenever there is an interesting feature we want 
to take advantage of.

-- Kevin


On 7/19/2022 7:31 AM, Nir Lisker wrote:
> Why is the bump to JDK 17 and not 18? In 18 the feature for Code 
> Snippets in Java API Documentation was added and it could be useful 
> for any new API.
>
> Is the plan to continue to pump the minimum version with every release 
> or once in several? Does it depend on the benefit the new features add?
>
> On Tue, Jul 19, 2022 at 4:44 PM Kevin Rushforth 
> <kevin.rushforth at oracle.com> wrote:
>
>     Even though we build JavaFX binaries with JDK 18 as the boot JDK, the
>     latest version of JavaFX still runs with JDK 11 (and is capable of
>     being
>     built using JDK 12 or later, and with some limitations, using JDK
>     11),
>     although it isn't tested with older JDK versions. In order for
>     JavaFX to
>     be able to use newer JDK features, such as records, switch
>     expressions,
>     text blocks, and so forth, we need to increase the minimum version of
>     the JDK that can run the latest JavaFX. Additionally, there is an
>     ongoing cost to keeping JavaFX buildable and runnable on older
>     versions
>     of Java, and very little reason to continue to do so.
>
>     To this end, I propose to bump the minimum version of the JDK
>     needed to
>     run JavaFX 20 to JDK 17. I filed JDK-8290530 [1] to track this. This
>     will not affect update releases of earlier versions of JavaFX (e.g.,
>     JavaFX 17.0.NN), which will continue to run with the same minimum JDK
>     that they run on today.
>
>     As a reminder, we only assure that JavaFX NN will run with JDK
>     NN-1 or
>     later, although in practice, we haven't bumped the minimum
>     required JDK
>     version in several releases. So, while JavaFX 19 is built using
>     JDK 18
>     as the boot JDK, it produces class files that will run with JDK 11,
>     using "--source 11 --target 11". The proposed change discussed here
>     would update that in JavaFX 20 to "--source 17 --target 17".
>
>     NOTE: this will not be an invitation to do wholesale refactoring of
>     existing classes or methods to use newer language features (e.g.,
>     a PR
>     that turns a bunch of existing data classes into records would not be
>     welcome). Rather, this can be seen as enabling judicious use of new
>     features in new code, much as we did when we started allowing the
>     use of
>     "var".
>
>     Absent a compelling reason to remain stuck in the past, I plan to
>     send
>     out a pull request for this change next week.
>
>     Comments are welcome.
>
>     -- Kevin
>
>     [1] https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-8290530
>
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