Hello devs, I would like to start a discussion regarding a new HBase connector release. Currently, the externalized HBase connector has only 1 release: 3.0.0 that supports Flink 1.16 and 1.17.
By stating this, it is obvious that the connector is already outdated for quite a while. There is a long-lasting ticket [1] to release a newer HBase version, which also contains a major version bump as HBase 1.x support is removed, but covering JDK17 with the current Hadoop related dependency mix is impossible, because there are parts that do not play well with it when you try to compile with JDK17+, and there are no runtime tests as well. Solving that properly will require to bump the HBase, Hadoop, and Zookeeper versions as well, but that will require more digging and some refactoring, at least on the test side. To cut some corners and move forward I think at this point it would make sense to release version 4.0 that supports Flink 1.18 and 1.19 but only on top of JDK8 and JDK11 just to close the current gap a bit. I am thinking about including the limitations in the java compat docs [2] to highlight users. WDYT? Best, Ferenc [1] https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FLINK-35136 [2] https://nightlies.apache.org/flink/flink-docs-release-1.19/docs/deployment/java_compatibility/
