On Fri, Oct 31, 2014 at 2:30 PM, Deepak Bhole <dbhole(a)redhat.com> wrote:
* Christopher <ctubbsii-fedora(a)apache.org> [2014-10-31 14:02]:
[snip]
> There is no issue with -target 1.6; the issue was with strict
source
> compatibility with 1.6. I can't recall the specifics (it had something
to do
> with generic type checking, because 1.7's javac can make better
inferences),
> but that's outside the scope of this issue. The main point, as it
relates here,
> is that there may not be strict compatibility between javac provided by
> different JDKs, even if javac makes a best effort attempt to parse older
> source. A more obvious problem is the lack of bootstrap classpaths for
older
> -source/-target, which is known to be likely to create compiled code
that is
> not capable of running in an older JVM (this doesn't matter if you're
> developing for the latest Fedora, but it matters if you're using the
latest
> Fedora to develop for other platforms, like RHEL or Android).
>
Ah, yeah not much we can do (with current setup) where the older rt.jar
is needed on bootstrap path :/
[snip]
Well, what we could do is rethink the policy about not packaging currently
supported JDKs, just because they are expected to not have further updates
at some future time. That policy's going to bite us anyway, if the pace of
Java ever reaches a point where a version of Java is released *and* EOL'd
during the same window (hypothetically, Java 8 is expected to EOL during
F22, and Java 9 is expected to be released and EOL'd during F22; would that
mean F22 cannot include any Java version?).
Personally, I like the idea of shipping the latest as default, and the next
most recent (so long as it is currently supported) as available as an
SDK/devel package and just stop updating it when there aren't any more
upstream updates and drop it from the next release.
--
Christopher L Tubbs II
http://gravatar.com/ctubbsii