Re: Which kawa versions actually use java-1.5 features?

[Per Bothner <per at bothner dot com>]

Leonardo Valeri Manera wrote:
> Hello.. I'm doing a little fine tuning on the gentoo ebuilds for kawa.
>
> I've set the live svn version to give kawa the right configure option
> depending on the java version used, but I was wondering, does it
> actually make use of java 1.5 features?
>
> If so, at what version number did this start?

Kawa has it's own little source-code pre-processor, and you
can configure Kawa to make use of Java 5 features, or not
require them.  You can even configure Kawa so that it builds
with just JDK 1.1, but I don't know if anyone has tested
that for years so it probably no longer works.

Until recently, the default configuration would require
JDK 1.4 functionality, but not JDK 1.5.  That means if the
distributed jar files required 1.4; also if you just
configure+make with default options you require 1.4.

But on January 26 I checked into the SVN repository a
change so the default is now to require JDK 1.5.
The pre-built jar files of future releases will require 1.5.

Kawa doesn't make heavy use of Java 5 functionality.
Mainly some internal classes are made compatible with
Java classes or interfaces where it makes sense - for
example java.lang.Appendable.  Or using the new valueOf
methods, or StringBuilder rather than StringBuffer.

I'd like to add support for annotations, and so enable
use of some of the tools that make use of them, such as
the Java Persistence API - maybe later this year.
--
	--Per Bothner
per@bothner.com   http://per.bothner.com/