Thanks for bringing this up! I have two concerns of dropping Java 8 support: - As a low level library, users have to add specific flags [1] to use Java 9 and up with Arrow to resolve issues with java.nio. This has been annoying for our customers constantly. If this is not resolved, I would say we may see a lot of complaints in the future. - It seems that the EOL of Java 8 from Oracle is Dec 2030 [2]. A lot users will still stay on it for a long time. At least this is true for our customers. So I am afraid we may not upgrade to newer versions of Arrow if it no longer supports Java 8.
[1] https://arrow.apache.org/docs/java/install.html#java-compatibility [2] https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/java-se-support-roadmap.html Best, Gang On Thu, Sep 14, 2023 at 11:14 PM David Dali Susanibar Arce < davi.sar...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi Arrow Java developers, > > I would like to propose a timeline for dropping support for Java 8: > - Propose to drop JDK8 in Arrow v15 (2 releases from now) > - JDK 21 support will be added before removal of JDK8 > > Why? > - Java 8 no longer receives Premier Support (1) > - Some Arrow Java (test) dependencies have already started to drop > Java 8 support, forcing us to pin to older packager versions > > Also note: > - gRPC Java may drop support for a JDK version when that version is no > longer receiving Premier Support from Oracle (2), more detail at Java > 8 / Java 11 support timeline in gRPC here (3) > - Spark plans to tentatively drop JDK 8 support in Spark 4.0 (4), > which has a release timeline of approximately 2024-06 (5). Is it fine > for us to drop JDK 8 support before spark? > > (1) https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/java-se-support-roadmap.html > (2) > https://github.com/grpc/proposal/pull/283/files#:~:text=gRPC%20Java%20may,support%5D > . > (3) https://groups.google.com/g/grpc-io/c/-XK6Kd_19YQ/m/-4s07TzdAgAJ > (4) https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SPARK-44112 > (5) https://www.mail-archive.com/dev@spark.apache.org/msg30460.html > > Consider: > - JDK8 deprecation is currently not mandatory. We simply want to > devote more time to development of Java LTS versions 11, 17 and 21. > - Java 11 is dropping Premier Support this month. > > Best regards, > > -- > David Susanibar >
