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

[Simon Kaegi]

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

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ceki Gulcu" <ceki at qos.ch>
To: "User list for the slf4j project" <user at slf4j.org>
Cc: "slf4j developers list" <dev at slf4j.org>
Sent: Thursday, March 26, 2009 1:16 PM
Subject: [slf4j-dev] [POLL] Requiring JDK 1.5 for SLF4J


Hello all,

SLF4J users have been asking for varags support for a long time. See
http://bugzilla.slf4j.org/show_bug.cgi?id=31 for more details. The
plan is to add varags support in SLF4J version 1.6 to be released later
this year, possibly in October 2009.

The idea is extremely simple. We would replace methods such as:

   // in current API
   public void debug(String msgFormat, Object[] argArray);

with:

   // proposed API for SLF4J 1.6.0
   public void debug(String msgFormat, Object... arg);

Interestingly enough, the proposed change is perfectly compatible with
existing code. In particular, code compiled against SLF4J 1.5.6 or
earlier will run fine against SLF4J 1.6.0 and vice versa, that is
client code compiled with SLF4J 1.6.0 will run fine with SLF4J 1.5.6
and earlier.

The only problem is that the varargs notation requires JDK 1.5. Thus,
we are faced with the question of requiring JDK 1.5 instead of JDK
1.3 in SLF4J.

Do you accept SLF4J dropping JDK 1.3 compatibility and require JDK 1.5
instead?  If you respond, please do so on the user at slf4j mailing list.

This poll is open for 3 months starting from today, March the 26th of
2009.

Many thanks in advance for your feedback.

-- 
Ceki Gülcü
Logback: The reliable, generic, fast and flexible logging framework for 
Java.
http://logback.qos.ch
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