XOM API for Processing XML with Java

[Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo AT ibiblio.org>]

Yes, absolutely. I had someone privately ask me about Java 6 support
in XOM this week. I expect I'm going to hear from people who are on
earlier versions of Java than that.

In my experience people vastly overestimate how fast upgrades happen
and vastly underestimate how many developers are using really old
versions. This is hardly unique to JDKs. I could say the same for
Eclipse, Linux, Windows, MacOS, Android, HTML, Maven, or most other
platforms you care to name.

There are details I can't give because they involve confidential
internal information from more than one place, but I am confident that
Java 9 and Java 10 aren't options for most production developers at
this point. Java 11 might be, and maybe it will be feasible to require
it sometime in the 2020s. At this point I'm comfortable requiring Java
5. Java 6 is probably OK, though not helpful in itself for any reason
I can think of right now since Java 6 didn't add much to the language.
Beyond that I'd be leaving users behind for no particular reason.


On Sat, Jul 21, 2018 at 12:11 PM, Joseph B. Ottinger
<joseph AT autumncode.com> wrote:
> Elliote... why is 1.6 still even a real concern? Java 8's the oldest Java
> version; after that, it's Java 10 for now. I'd think for new releases,
> targeting Java 1.8's bytecode (and language compatibility) would be enough
> - and supporting java 10 modules would be good as well. Targeting older
> Java versions presumes maintenance on apps by a very very very very small
> user group (those who are paying Oracle for JVM support) and while those
> people are not value-less, I'd think for new releases targeting recent Java
> versions would be preferable for all kinds of reasons.
>
>
> On Sat, Jul 21, 2018 at 12:00 PM, Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo AT ibiblio.org>
> wrote:
>
>> Folks,
>>
>>
>> I've quietly posted jars/zips/tars for what I think will be 1.2.11:
>>
>> https://www.cafeconleche.org/XOM/xom-1.2.11.jar
>> https://www.cafeconleche.org/XOM/xom-1.2.11.zip
>> https://www.cafeconleche.org/XOM/xom-1.2.11.tar.gz
>>
>> Feel free to give these a whirl. Changes are very minor aside from a
>> single unthrown IOException I removed from Canonicalizer.
>>
>> This release is compiled for Java 1.6 byte code because I don't have a
>> compiler that goes further back than that handy. However if this
>> causes major trouble for anyone, I can try to find something that
>> compile for older releases. Source code should be compatible as far
>> back as Java 1.4 and probably further.
>>
>> If no one notices any major flaws, I'll tag the repo and update the
>> website in a week or so.
>>
>> The next release will probably be tagged 1.3 and will require Java 1.5
>> at the minimum, possibly later. It should still be fully compatible
>> with existing code though.
>>
>> --
>> Elliotte Rusty Harold
>> elharo AT ibiblio.org
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-- 
Elliotte Rusty Harold
elharo AT ibiblio.org