On Sun, May 11, 2008 at 9:27 AM, Luc Maisonobe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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 ?
I agree that moving to 1.5 minimum in 2.0 would be OK. The only thing that bugs me is that there is a fair amount of (mostly Mantissa) stuff queued up for 2.0 that does not require 1.5. I wonder how many users of the new stuff will still be on < 1.5. Probably not many, so I am +1 for requiring 1.5+ for 2.0. Phil > > Luc > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
