[sakai2-tcc] Java 1.6 and Sakai 2.9

[Matthew Jones]

I agree too, and I was planning on sending this out, but now I can as a
followup.

As mentioned on the source install guide, "Oracle's Sun Java SE
6<http://java.sun.com/javase/6/>,
a.k.a Java 1.6, is the preferred version to use with Sakai 2.7." [1] However
there is still some confusion about what this means. As we know Java 5 is
nearly a year now past the End of Life (11/09) and also harder to find for
new people looking for it.

Possible problems:

* The install guide mentions that Sakai 2.7+ is preferred to run under Java
1.6, but maven still targets 1.5 for binaries. We are also still (mostly)
producing binaries that are compatible with 1.5. However as recently
evidenced on the list [2] some binaries are in 1.6 and this causes some
confusion.

* The workaround "-Dsun.lang.ClassLoader.allowArraySyntax=true" (SAK-17578)
is still required for many tools. From following this, it seems that this is
mostly because of the use of older jsf and other libraries which could be
very time consuming to upgrade. (SAK-19282).

I agree with Seth that we should:

* Make the decision to switch the compilation for trunk (2.9) to 1.6. Sakai
after this version will no longer be guaranteed to be compatible with
JDK/JRE 1.5 and apis/methods/libraries specific to 1.6 could be used if
necessary.

* Accept that we will be keeping this workaround flag along through this
release, possibly indefinitely for Sakai 2.x. This was something that the
project planning *wanted* to achieve [1], but doesn't seem incredibly
realistic. This is considering the effort involved in the fixes and across
all tool QA compared to the effort involved leaving in the known workaround.
 Steve Swinsburg has also recently marked SAK's like SAK-17578 as "Won't
Fix" with the comment which I agree with of:

*"**Marking this issue as Won't Fix as we do not have the resources to fix
this. The workaround of specifying the extra JAVA_OPTS is suitable."*

There are also a number of outstanding issues to upgrade to Tomcat 6
(SAK-8544, SAK-10720, SAK-17891) and even one for Tomcat 7 (SAK-187600 , but
I feel this is less of a critical issue than the JDK is immediately.
Something we should look at though.

[1]
http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/DOC/Install+Guide+-+Source+Install+(2.7)

[2]
http://collab.sakaiproject.org/pipermail/sakai-dev/2010-November/010013.html

[3]
http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/MGT/Sakai+2x+Project+Planning+Goals

On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 11:26 AM, Seth Theriault <slt at columbia.edu> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> The hybrid artifact Java version mismatch in trunk reminds me
> that we probably need to deciede which version of Java we are
> using going forward.
>
> For 2.7.1 and probably 2.8, we recommended 1.6, but left the
> possibility of using 1.5 out there. I don't think we can maintain
> this situation.
>
> What do people think about moving fully to 1.6 in trunk
> (maintaining the workarounds)?
>
> Seth
>
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