Re: Java 1.4

John Lister <john.lister-ps@kickstone.com> wrote:

> I noted from the recent NIO thread that support for Java 1.4 was
> checked. I know from previous discussion that this has been
> brought up, but was wondering if there was a reason for still
> supporting 1.4? I therefore wondered if it is still worth while
> supporting something released nearly 10 years ago and nearly 8
> years since its last update and not freeze a version for that
> release (except maybe security related updates). Similarly would
> it be wise to freeze the jdbc 2 & 3 updates as well since they
> require Java 1.4 and concentrate on jdbc 4 support and maybe Java
> 1.5 (or even 1.6) and the additional features?
>
> With that, I'll leave it open to the floor to discuss...

JDK 1.5 was released in September of 2004, entered its end-of-life
phase in April of 2008, with support dropped in November of 2009.
JDK 1.6 was released in December of 2006 and is mature and still
supported.  JDK 1.7 was released six months ago and might not be
considered mature enough for everyone yet.

I really don't see the point of supporting anything so archaic as
JDK 1.4.  The old jars are still there for anyone who is stuck at
that level for some reason.

JDK 1.5 is a little more borderline; newer versions have only been
available for five years, and it has only been completely out of
support with the vendor for a little over two years.  With those
numbers, it would be hard for someone to really find fault with the
project for not producing new driver versions.  On the other hand,
JDK 1.5 entered its end-of-life phase when the latest major release
of PostgreSQL was 8.3, and went completely out of support when the
latest major release of PostgreSQL was 8.4 -- PostgreSQL releases
which won't hit EOL for another year or two.

Perhaps the litmus test should be whether there is still a supported
major version of PostgreSQL which was released while the Java
version was still supported?  Such a test would have us dropping
support for JDK 1.4 now, but still supporting JDK 1.5 until July of
2014.

-Kevin