Friday, October 16, 2009

JBoss AS 5.2 and JDK support

Since JBoss AS 5 we have offered two different distributions of the application server. For example, you can download jboss-5.1.0.GA.zip which is build with jdk5 and can run under both jdk5 and jdk6 runtimes (with a few changes), or go straight for jboss-5.1.0.GA-jdk6.zip which is build with jdk6 and can run only under a jdk6 runtime. (For details look in the release notes.)

Now realizing that (a) Sun's JDK5 is reaching its End-Of-Life in a couple of weeks (although for paying customers it is going to be supported for quite some time) and (b) around 70% of JBoss AS downloads are of the jdk6 type, we've decided it's probably time to move onto a jdk6 only distribution.

So, going forward, although the AS 5.2 codebase can still be build with jdk5, we will not be supporting it.

Does that present a problem for you? Let's us know before any final decisions are made.

Cheers
/Dimitris

8 comments:

javapapo said...

we have already migrated to jdk6 - much better perfomance - so yes nice move - keep on.
If only I could use JBoss :D

dhartford said...

Moving to jdk6 only for the community edition of jboss 5.2 sounds great to me!

Nicklas Karlsson said...

OK by me. I think people are not that shy at migrating anymore as was with the case of 1.3 and 1.4 -> Java 5. Just wrote my first Java 7 code last week ;-)

Of course, one can only hope that all appserver-vendors move along as quickly. Nothing sucks as much as having to write code for some legacy appserver...

Darryl L. Miles said...

Does this thought affect EAS in the same way?

Maybe it would help if the difficulties in maintaining dual JDK5/JDK6
releases for the remainder of JBoss AS5 roadmap could be explained to the
community. How many more releases of AS5 are there expected to be ?

My choice would be that both JDK5 and JDK6 options should remain during the JBoss AS 5.x releases. With AS6 providing Java6&Java7 support.

Dimitris Andreadis said...

@darryl.miles

Apparently we've decided to stop working on the AS 5.x branch and move off onto AS 6. There is an imminent AS 6 M1 release next week.

Now regarding EAS (I suppose you mean EAP - Enterprise Application Platform), the intention for that was to only support jdk6, because this has a 7 year support horizon and jdk5 is already at its EOL.

Now the differences between jdk5/jdk6 builds had mostly to do with WS support, JDBC differences between the 2 jdks and the QA overhead of doing all testing twice.

Frank Kelly said...

Agreed with a JDK6 only option esp. with Java 5 reaching EOL

Unknown said...

Yes, JDK 6 only please, much better memory management and performance...

Dimitris Andreadis said...

EAP 5.2 is already at Extended Life Support Stage, you'll need a special contract for that, see: https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/jboss_notes