On Fri, Nov 20, 2015 at 2:01 AM, Kay Schenk <kay.sch...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 11/17/2015 11:50 PM, Damjan Jovanovic wrote: > > Building AOO with Java 8's very strict javadoc tool was fixed in SVN > trunk > > only, by r1697228, r1697237, r1697247, r1697306, and r1697312, so yes it > > should work well for building AOO now, and it's the only version I've > been > > testing for months on FreeBSD. Base works, wizards work, beanshell > scripts > > works, bvt/fvt/pvt tests generally pass (I haven't compared test results > > with different Java versions). > > > > LibreOffice supposedly builds with Java 6. > > > > Java 7 added major new language features, like try-with-resources, > > diamonds, switch on strings, so requiring Java >= 7 would be good for > > development purposes. But then users can't use any older JRE version, > which > > might be a problem for unofficial Java implementations that are a little > > behind (see > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Java_virtual_machines). > > When last I checked, the only fast JVM on the Raspberry Pi with the hard > > float (hf) kernel was CACAO, which only supports Java 1.6. > > > > A while ago I did find a way to change the bytecode and class file > version > > of the class files produced by Java 1.7's javac, to make most language > (as > > opposed to API) features work on 1.6 and 1.5 JREs. I even have a Maven > > plugin to do this. I can look into it again if necessary? > > > > Oh and should we maybe use Maven for building Java code instead of > > dmake/gbuild/ant? > > > > Damjan > > Thanks for the feedback. I hope we can get responses from Windows > and Mac builders soon. > > ...and, why do you like Maven instead of what we have now? > > Why Maven: * Popular advanced build system for Java * Reproducible builds * Dependencies and plugins are downloaded on demand during the build * Tens of thousands of plugins, eg. Javadoc generation, Findbugs analysis, animal-sniffer plugin to verify no APIs from later Java versions are used, etc. * Convention over configuration: configuration is minimal, a plugin is just named to add it, no setting up paths to files, settings only necessary if they differ from defaults * Maven projects have been supported by every major Java IDE for many years (NetBeans, Eclipse, IntelliJ IDEA) * There was already talk of providing our JARs like jurt.jar on the Maven central repository for easy access by developers * Easier to add now, when not that much Java is being used yet ;-)
