Time to make java 11 the new default?

[Christian Stadelmann]

Hey together,

I just noticed that the default Java implementation on Fedora 30 is still Java 8. Is this
intended? I.e. both `dnf provides java` and `dnf provides java-headless` list only
java-1.8.0-openjdk (or its subpackage).

How about this plan:
1. For Fedora 31, make also java-11-openjdk `Provides:` the relevant version-independent
package aliases `java` and `java-headless` and so on. If this proposal is too late for
Fedora 31, then make it for Fedora 32.
2. One release later, drop the version-independent aliases from java-1.8.0-openjdk so that
java is being updated to java-11-openjdk for all users.

Kind regards,
Chris

[Severin Gehwolf]

Hi,

On Sun, 2019-08-11 at 11:29 +0000, Christian Stadelmann wrote:
>  Hey together,
>  
>  I just noticed that the default Java implementation on Fedora 30 is
>  still Java 8. Is this intended? I.e. both `dnf provides java` and
>  `dnf provides java-headless` list only java-1.8.0-openjdk (or its
>  subpackage). 
Yes, that's intentional.

>  
>  How about this plan:
>  1. For Fedora 31, make also java-11-openjdk `Provides:` the relevant version-independent
> package aliases `java` and `java-headless` and so on. If this proposal is too late for
> Fedora 31, then make it for Fedora 32.
>  2. One release later, drop the version-independent aliases from java-1.8.0-openjdk so
> that java is being updated to java-11-openjdk for all users. 
Note that for such a change we'd have to make sure that *all* Java
packages build/run with java-11-openjdk as this essentially means any
java package currently requiring java or java-devel will switch JDK to
a modularized JDK underneath. Due to that potential breakage we haven't
done the switch. JDK 11 has been GA'ed in September 2018, which was
less than a year ago, fwiw.

If you'd like to help perform a mass-rebuild (into a separate tag?) and
assess what's breaking, feel free to.

Thanks,
Severin

[Mikolaj Izdebski]

On Mon, Aug 12, 2019 at 10:38 AM Severin Gehwolf <sgehwolf(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:
>  Hi,
>
>  On Sun, 2019-08-11 at 11:29 +0000, Christian Stadelmann wrote:
>  > Hey together,
>  >
>  > I just noticed that the default Java implementation on Fedora 30 is
>  > still Java 8. Is this intended? I.e. both `dnf provides java` and
>  > `dnf provides java-headless` list only java-1.8.0-openjdk (or its
>  > subpackage).
>
>  Yes, that's intentional. 
I confirm that this is intended situation.

>  >
>  > How about this plan:
>  > 1. For Fedora 31, make also java-11-openjdk `Provides:` the relevant
> version-independent package aliases `java` and `java-headless` and so on. If this proposal
> is too late for Fedora 31, then make it for Fedora 32.
>  > 2. One release later, drop the version-independent aliases from java-1.8.0-openjdk
> so that java is being updated to java-11-openjdk for all users.
>
>  Note that for such a change we'd have to make sure that *all* Java
>  packages build/run with java-11-openjdk as this essentially means any
>  java package currently requiring java or java-devel will switch JDK to
>  a modularized JDK underneath. Due to that potential breakage we haven't
>  done the switch. JDK 11 has been GA'ed in September 2018, which was
>  less than a year ago, fwiw. 
I don't think that this change would require any packages to be ported
to Java 11. Definitely not all of the packages that currently don't
work with Java 11. Thanks to "Decouple system java setting from java
command setting" change [1] applications in the distribution use
specific OpenJDK version on which they were tested, not system Java.
Even if Fedora defaults for /usr/bin/java etc. are changed to Java 11
then applications (that are conformant to packaging guidelines) will
continue to be ran on OpenJDK 8 unless they are configured to be ran
with a specific OpenJDK version.

It would be nice to have at least a draft schedule for retirement of
OpenJDK 8 so that maintainers can test their packages with more recent
Java versions and port their packages if necessary. Fixing *all*
packages should not be needed - in cases where maintainers are absent
or don't have time to do that, their packages should be retired and
not block the whole distribution from moving forward.


[1]
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Decouple_system_java_setting_from_...

--
Mikolaj Izdebski