Details
-
New Feature
-
Status: Closed
-
Major
-
Resolution: Fixed
-
None
-
None
-
None
Description
Atlas should move to assume Java 8 in order to remain current
Java 7's last official release was in April 2015
Java 8 was released in March 2014 and is the current release
Java 9 is currently targetted for release in July 2017
Various new components we wish to integrate, such as Janus Graph now quite sensibly depend on, and can take advantage of, Java 8. Whilst Atlas does build cleanly under java 8, the new capabilities cannot be used and more crucially any components requiring it can't be so easily integrated into the source. With Java 7 way out of focus there are more likely to be security exposures too.
One of the current main environments Atlas is supported in is Hadoop. Hadoop 2.x is build with Java 7, though the very latest releases do at least support build with Java 8. Hadoop 3 which prereqs java 8 is due for release in August 2017
However other environments in the enterprise need not be constrained by this dependency
We need to decide how we will tackle this dependency change & mitigate the impacts - for example
- we stay as-is until hadoop 3 is current/into 2018 (in my view too long)
- we go all out on java 8 in the current trunk, and branches are cut for java 7 approach (I worry this is too much work to dual-fix)
- we create multiple build profiles and carefully allow java8 code in as needed, but in such a way as a java7 version can still be built, albeit missing out on selective functionality - this could still be tricky, and has run-time dependency differences
- if profiles we decide on default (once working I'd suggest 8...)
Thoughts welcome 
Attachments
Issue Links
- requires
-
ATLAS-2232 Master build should drop source and target 1.7 directives
-
- Resolved
-