Transition master to Java 7 as Java 6 has been retired.

Jody Garnett (although Andrea Aime provided the initial question).

This upgrade will first be public in 2.6-beta. It does not effect 2.5.x or 2.4.x development.

• Under Discussion
• In Progress
• Completed
• Rejected
• Deferred

Upgrading to Java 7 is proposed to reflect out users migration plans. Java 6 security updates are no longer available for download.

This would also enable the use of a newer version of Jetty.

This proposal at a basic level involves updating our documentation:

• http://docs.geoserver.org/stable/en/user/production/java.html
• http://docs.geoserver.org/stable/en/developer/tools.html

Known issues with using Java 7:

• RangeLookupTest: testRangeLookup - Unable to parse the header for the provided input

The other tasks revolve around updating our build servers:

Linux build server

• master to be built with OpenJDK 7
• 2.5.x and 2.4.x built with Oracle JDK 1.6

Windows build server

• master to be built with Oracle JDK 7
• 2.5.x and 2.4.x built with Oracle JDK 1.6

Since we will be maintaining the use of Java 6 on the stable and maintenance branch our build servers will need some care during configuration.

Email list provided general enthusiasm for try-with-resource and diamond operator (and looks forward to Java 8 features as well).

This is balanced with concern for difficulty accepting patches for the stable branch.

We should keep use of Java 7 syntax (such as try-with-resource) to a minimum until GeoServer 2.5.0 passes out of maintenance (i.e. end of 2014).

This will allow fixes to be more easily backported.

Alessio Fabiani: Andrea Aime: +1 Ben Caradoc Davies: +1 Christian Mueller: +1 Gabriel Roldan: +1 Jody Garnett: +1 Jukka Rahkonen: +1 Justin Deoliveira: +1 Phil Scadden: Simone Giannecchini: +0

Mailing list:

• http://osgeo-org.1560.x6.nabble.com/Java-8-is-out-Hem-shall-we-start-using-java-7-tt5131162.html

Issues:

• GEOS–6443