Draft JEP: Time-Based Release Versioning

[Stephen Colebourne]

The document doesn't state what happens to the --release flag in
javac, which seems a linked issue worthy of inclusion.

I and others (based on feedback I've seen) think this new flag is
great, but it only retains its usefulness if it supports older
versions over a (very) long period of time. I'm currently setting up
the Joda-* projects to use it, but some have Java 6 as a baseline. Any
move to increase the minimum from Java 6 would thus be a problem for
me.

At a minimum, I believe that Java 6 should remain the baseline of the
feature until Java 12 (ie. support for 6 removed in the release after
the LTS v11).

Ideally however, I'd prefer Java 6 support is removed in Java 18
(assuming 17 is an LTS). The feature really is that useful.

thanks
Stephen


On 30 November 2017 at 18:11,  <mark.reinhold at oracle.com> wrote:
> Thanks for all the comments on my earlier proposal [1].  Here's a draft
> JEP, based on that proposal and the feedback:
>
>   http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/8192828
>
> Further comments welcome!
>
> - Mark
>
>
> [1] http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/jdk-dev/2017-November/000089.html