[slf4j-user] [slf4j-dev] [POLL] Requiring JDK 1.5 for SLF4J

[Simon Kaegi]

I brought Java 1.5 support up at today's Equinox meeting.
--
Equinox is likely to stay with a Profile 1.1 / Java 1.4 restriction for the 
base Eclipse RCP level and lower for some time still. (at least until 
there's broad availability of VMs for the embedded/mobile space that 
supports Java 1.5)

The IDE platform itself will likely upgrade to 1.5 when we go to Eclipse 4. 
We're likely to continue the annual 3.x releases for awhile still and these 
will likely keep the bar set at Java 1.4 unless there's a really good reason 
to bump up. This is the layer where most 3rd party libraries including SLF4J 
get brought in.

I talked to the mobile/embedded VM guys who work down the hall here and got 
the impression to not hold one's breath for a follow on to 
CDC-1.1/Profile-1.1 meaning a significant segment of the mobile space will 
be stuck at 1.4 for sometime still. I'm not sure if SLF4J is used in 
mobile/embedded but it's something to keep in mind.
--

My fear is also similar to yours where we end up with two conflicting 
versions of SLF4J; in the Eclipse 3.x scenario it seems likely to occur. 
With that said, these are the sorts of problems that OSGi was built to solve 
so technically we likely can find a way to handle this, it just makes things 
a bit more complex.

-Simon

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Simon Kaegi" <simon.kaegi at gmail.com>
To: "User list for the slf4j project" <user at slf4j.org>
Sent: Wednesday, April 01, 2009 12:05 PM
Subject: Re: [slf4j-user] [slf4j-dev] [POLL] Requiring JDK 1.5 for SLF4J


>> When are you planning to move to 1.5 in Equinox?
> My best guess is the e4 release in June 2010 but let me try and pin this 
> down at the next Equinox call (Tuesday) and report back. FWIW I'll also 
> ping some of the embedded VM folk who work close by to get there thoughts 
> on timeframes for what (if anything) is going to happen with 
> CDC/Foundation.
>
> -Simon
> --
> Hello Simon,
>
> Thank you for your detailed and informative response. Much appreciated.
>
> The Eclipse Equinox scenario you describe resembles my nightmare scenario
> whereby an application container requires an older JDK-1.3-compatible 
> version of
> SLF4J and a hosted application requires a newer version of SLF4J requiring 
> JDK
> 1.5, resulting in a version-deadlock. We could imagine isolating the usage 
> of
> SLF4J by the host so that it does not interfere with applications (as 
> Jetty
> does). However, we are talking about logging which has to be simple and 
> robust.
>
> When are you planning to move to 1.5 in Equinox?
>
> Simon Kaegi wrote:
>> I feel your pain; bumping to 1.5 class files is a big deal for low-level
>> libraries like logging.
>>
>> My team works on the Eclipse Equinox project and we continue to struggle
>> with when to update to 1.5 class files and features. Even in the upcoming
>> release of OSGi we're limited to OSGi min 1.2 which still uses 1.2 class
>> files. As a result of how this requirement ripples this change will 
>> prevent
>> us from using this new version of SLF4J for logging in the core Eclipse
>> platform until we also bump our minimum requirements to 1.5 class files.
>>
>> For more typical users I agree that there are some benefits in terms of 
>> API
>> however this sort of change will affect people in the mobile and embeded
>> space who for the most part are using CDC-1.1/Foundation-1.1 (similar to
>> Java 1.4). Varargs are of course syntactic sugar however the real problem 
>> is
>> the class file version bump. Many of the mobile VMs being used can read 
>> 1.5
>> class files (despite having a 1.1 profile class library) but I'd be 
>> hesitant
>> to rely on this.
>>
>> Varargs doesn't really cut it as sufficient benefit to break part of the
>> community so I'm -1 on this change for now as I suspect if you go ahead
>> you'll be maintaining dual releases for sometime. With that said (like 
>> us)
>> you probably cannot dodge this upgrade forever.
>> -Simon
>>
> -- 
> Ceki Gülcü
> Logback: The reliable, generic, fast and flexible logging framework for 
> Java.
> http://logback.qos.ch
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