Luc Maisonobe wrote: > Mauro Talevi recently proposed a new package for general linear > regression (https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/MATH-203). This patch > needs Java 5, mainly for annotations. > > Mauro suggested to take the opportunity of the next [math] major version > to switch to Java 5. A major version seems appropriate for such a > change, but do we want to do it now ? > > My personal opinion is that sticking to Java 1.3 is really obsolete and > difficult. When I upgraded my Linux box recently, I had to search old > backups to reinstall a JDK manually. Dropping this could simplify some > codes (exceptions for example) and fix some errors (there is a known > issue with unit tests since Java 1.3 does not compute trigonometric > functions as it should). > > If we decide to change minimal Java version, I would choose to target > 1.5. It is widely adopted and deployed now and has many features which > would be useful for a mathematical library: > - new Math functions (log10, cbrt, ulp, signum, cosh, sinh, tanh, > hypot, expm1, log1p) > - autoboxing > - MathContext, RoundingMode > In addition, there are the many features that are interesting for any > type of Java development (enums, generics, annotations). > > Java 6 brings even more Math functions (copysign, getExponent, > nextAfter, nextUp, scalb), some of which we needed to add ourselves in > MathUtils. However, I'm not sure it is as widely deployed than Java5. > > Perhaps Java 7 would bring even more functions (asinh, acosh and atanh > are still missing ...) > > What do you think ? > > Luc > IMHO the time is right now for Java 1.5. I am not sure about the adoption of higher versions, so with 1.5 you are probably on the safe side.
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