Re: Moving to Java 5?

> Before we released 1.0, we discussed the possibility of making future
> releases of JRuby based on Java 5 instead of Java 1.4.2. I think it's
> time to raise that question again.
>
> We have a 1.0 release out now, which largely seems to be very solid and
> very well received. Compatibility is very good and performance is
> comfortable enough to be safely used in real production apps. We will
> maintain the 1.0 branch for users of JRuby 1.0, which will receive
> compatibility and minor performance fixes as appropriate. Release 1.0.1
> will be coming out soon with a large collection of fixes migrated from
> the trunk work and from a couple large users of JRuby that have been
> helping to merge stuff across.
>
> But the lack of Java 5 support in trunk is now starting to hold back
> development. A short list of things we could actually make use of:
>
> - Enums for the many flags and specifiers in the system
> - Real concurrent collections, rather than emulated implementations from
> the backport library
> - Annotations for specifying method bindings. This could largely
> eliminate the need for manual method-binding code, as well as allow us
> to split method implementations by arity and even argument type
> - Support for Java 5 constructs (generics, varargs, enums) in Java
> integration
> - Elimination of a few areas of inefficiency: environment variables,
> Integer.valueOf (Integer caching), various String manipulation methods,
> Charset conversions...
>
> So there's lots of reasons to start making trunk Java 5+ only. And we
> made good on our promise to release JRuby 1.0 compatible with Java 1.4.2.
>
> Perhaps it's time we made the move to Java 5?
>
> - Charlie
>
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