We are gearing up for the release of Maven 3.2.0... wherein we will drop support for Java 1.5 as the runtime that Maven requires (we will still support compiling and running tests with older JVMs via toolchains though)
This means we will effectively enter a realm of "1 and 1 back" Do we want to switch to this as a policy? i.e. something like: "When a new Major/Minor line is released, the JVM requirements for running Maven will be the latest current Oracle JVM version and the previous Oracle JVM version or any JVM version compatible with such" Which could mean that Maven 4.0 would be Java 7 as a minimum requirement (assuming Java 8 were released before we get to our 4.0) (I know Chris is going to chime in and point out that IBM is still supporting various versions of Java on different platforms... and RedHat has pledged to support OpenJDK 6 as long as its customers want/pay it to) Anyway... just some thoughts P.S. I would really love to be able to use the Java 8 features in Maven core... "1 and 1 back" still leaves us until Java 9 before we can do that... which is a good 2-3 years away from now... unless somebody implements a retroweaver to Java 7 (which at least stands a good chance), hence why I would like to drive us to Java 7 as a minimum once Java 8 is released.
