Re: Java 1.6?

I would not put "apache Ant" as not a 'bellweather' but a "last trailing 
indicator".
Ant has to *build things* so its very important it runs on the oldest 
JVM reasonably accepted to be in use anywhere.

I believe the answer depends on your target audience, as well as the 
maturity/age/penetration of your existing project/program.

Also relevant is if your program runs "standalone" or runs "embedded".
Since Java versions can co-exist in the same machine trivially its not 
unreasonable that a "standalone" program have different dependency 
assumptions then an embedded program.   With an embedded program you 
cant say "Just update to X.Y" as easily.




David A. Lee
dlee@calldei.com  
http://www.calldei.com
http://www.xmlsh.org
812-482-5224



James Fuller wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 3:31 PM, Norman Walsh<ndw@nwalsh.com> wrote:
>   
>> Long ago, I abandoned support for Java 1.4.
>>
>> Is it too early to abandon support for Java 1.5?
>>     
>
> I tend to track Apache Ant to answer these kinds of questions ...
>
> for example, last Apache Ant 1.7.1 release needs java 1.3 and above
> ... in Apache Ant svn trunk one now needs java 1.4; that shows that
> there has been some recent change, though note that there can be lots
> of time between Ant releases.
>
> I think Apache Ant could be considered a 'bellweather' indicator so
> its not so radical to consider v1.5 these days ... though I might test
> with java v1.4 as a courtesy for those who may have no option to
> upgrade.
>
> Jim Fuller
>