Do anyone know when Eclipse plans to move its codebase to > 1.5 (i.e. using generic & annotation)?
A:
Some of Eclipse codebase (the JEE part) is already using 1.5 level. As for the rest of it, I don't think they have any plans - I doubt if it is worth the effort.
More here -> http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/moreinfo/jre.php
Yoni
2010-02-03 06:52:45
I doubt if it is worth the effort. -> As someone who works on Eclipse RCP and plugins, it is really worth the effort.
nanda
2010-02-03 08:35:19
what's stopping you from using generics in your own code? generics are designed such that they can work with legacy code, in fact, that was a very important part of their design.
Yoni
2010-02-03 09:00:13
that doesn't stop me. Really. but if you say that there is no benefit of having the Eclipse codebase move to 1.5, please ask Spring guys why they move their codebase to 1.5. It's just a lot of things are easier in this life.
nanda
2010-02-03 09:33:11
+1
A:
Even the latest plan for the upcoming eclipse 3.6 Helios still mentions:
Most of the Eclipse SDK is "pure" Java code and has no direct dependence on the underlying operating system. The chief dependence is therefore on the Java Platform itself.
Portions are targeted to specific classes of operating environments, requiring their source code to only reference facilities available in particular class libraries (e.g.J2ME Foundation 1.1,J2SE 1.4,Java 5, etc).In general, the 3.6 release of the Eclipse Project is developed on a mix of
Java 1.4,Java 5andJava 6VMs.
As such, the Eclipse SDK as a whole is targeted at all modern, desktop Java VMs.
Most functionality is available for 1.4 level development everywhere, and extended development capabilities are made available on the VMs that support them.
So as long as they want to support platforms with an old JDK, the incentive to rewrite a large portion of the codebase in recent JDK is low.
Note: e4 (Eclipse 4.0) will be based on Java 5.
In general, the 1.0 release of the e4 Project is developed on Java SE 5.
VonC
2010-02-03 07:51:35
Yeah... the e4 will be based on Java 5, but the dependencies will still use the 1.4, and therefore if I'm developing application using RCP, I will still make a lot of casting. I just hate it!
nanda
2010-02-03 08:34:06
you don't need to cast, you can use generics still with SuppressWarning, etc.
Yoni
2010-02-03 09:01:52