Hi all, As I looked deeper into the details of the impact of this change, it became apparent to me that it may better to postpone it to a future release. Reasons follow:
1. Once we move to Java 8, there will be a ripple effect in all projects that depend on the Kafka clients jar. Given where we are in the release cycle[2], we would prefer to focus our resources on ensuring a high quality release despite the extensive changes to core parts of Kafka (message format, replication protocol, single-threaded controller, transactions, etc.). In other words, improving test coverage, stabilising flaky tests (as they may be hiding real bugs), fixing issues identified, etc. is more valuable to our users than bumping the minimum JDK version. 2. If we bump the version, exactly-once (idempotent producer and transactions) and headers won't be available for clients that are stuck using Java 7. In addition, taking advantage of KIP-101 (an important improvement to the replication protocol) would require down conversion (and consequent performance impact) if there are Java 7 clients. Users tend to have less control on client environments and upgrading the JDK version is challenging. Our research indicates that this is not uncommon. 3. Even though Oracle no longer publishes security fixes for Java 7 freely (a support contract is required), Red Hat continues to publish them and will do so until June 2018[1]. Given the above, I suggest we postpone the Java 8 switch to a subsequent major release. It's a bit frustrating, but I think this is the right decision for our users. Are there any objections? Ismael [1] https://access.redhat.com/articles/1299013 [2] https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/KAFKA/Release+Plan+0.11.0.0 On Tue, Feb 28, 2017 at 4:11 AM, Becket Qin <becket....@gmail.com> wrote: > +1 > > On Mon, Feb 27, 2017 at 6:38 PM, Ismael Juma <ism...@juma.me.uk> wrote: > > > Thanks to everyone who voted and provided feedback. +1 (binding) from me > > too. > > > > The vote has passed with 4 binding votes (Grant, Jason, Guozhang, Ismael) > > and 11 non-binding votes (Bill, Damian, Eno, Edoardo, Mickael, Bharat, > > Onur, Vahid, Colin, Apurva, Tom). There were no 0 or -1 votes. > > > > I have updated the relevant wiki pages. > > > > Ismael > > > > On Thu, Feb 9, 2017 at 3:31 PM, Ismael Juma <ism...@juma.me.uk> wrote: > > > > > Hi everyone, > > > > > > Since everyone in the discuss thread was in favour (10 people > responded), > > > I would like to initiate the voting process for KIP-118: Drop Support > for > > > Java 7 in Kafka 0.11: > > > > > > https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/KAFKA/KIP- > > > 118%3A+Drop+Support+for+Java+7+in+Kafka+0.11 > > > > > > The vote will run for a minimum of 72 hours. > > > > > > Thanks, > > > Ismael > > > > > > > > >
