At code level we need to separate language features from library features? It should be possible to leverage memory API for example through reflection and/or multi-release jar files, but record is a language feature and it would not possible to use it without targeting java 17 at the source level.
Laurent On Tue, Apr 2, 2024 at 1:40 AM Jean-Baptiste Onofré <j...@nanthrax.net> wrote: > Hi Laurent > > It makes sense to me. I started this "move" (on the plugin side of the > thing) as part of the reproducible build effort. > > At code level, I think it would be great to leverage some features > from Java 17+ (I'm thinking about record, memory API, etc). > I would be more than happy to help on this as soon as we have a consensus. > > Thanks, > Regards > JB > > On Mon, Apr 1, 2024 at 7:48 PM Laurent Goujon > <laur...@dremio.com.invalid> wrote: > > > > Hello Arrow Java developers, > > > > I would wonder if the community would be okay to change the minimum Java > > version used by the build toolchain to at least Java 17 or 21 (or even > 22). > > This is different from changing the minimum Java version used at runtime > > which would still be 8 (following the vote from last september). > > > > Concretely it would mean: > > * Java 21 would be required to build Arrow Java > > * But Arrow would still be compatible with Java 8 > > * Unit tests should keep running with Java 8 and higher. > > > > Reasons for changing the toolchain would be: > > - More and more tools and plugins now require at least Java 11, forcing > the > > project to keep using older/unsupported versions > > - We hacked our way to support Java modules with > > > https://github.com/apache/arrow/tree/main/java/maven/module-info-compiler-maven-plugin > > - There are several new features which we could conditionally include in > > the Arrow project like VarHandle (Java 9) and Foreign Function and Memory > > API (Java 22) to move away from Unsafe support which require more and > more > > workarounds (Apache Lucene is a project which has managed to introduce > > support for multiple Java incubator and final API while maintaining > > compatibility with previous Java versions). But doing it from Java 8 > > creates a higher barrier. > > > > Laurent >
