In a previous blog post we announced our plans to move make Java8 the minimum version of Java we support from 2017. After that date all our products will require Java8 (or above). This blog post is to remind you of the timing and reasons for the change.
Choosing which Java version is always a compromise between backwards compatibility and making use of new features. New versions of Java will generally run old code releases (we currently support Java6 and above), but we do not make any use of features introduced in Java7 or Java8 in our code base.
From April 2017, we will make use of these new features (default methods, Lambdas, etc) in our code (which will allow us to continue to innovate and improve the products). In practice you should already be running your code on something higher than Java6 (ideally Java8 at the time of writing). Java6 and Java7 have been obsolete and unsupported for some time and represent a major security risk to your systems if you are still using it.
We have endeavoured to announce this change with a year’s notice and I have tried to personally contact as many of our customers as possible. If you need any more information or may have issues with this change, please let us know via this blog post or our support forums and we can discuss with you.
We are really excited at the chance to move our code base onto Java8 in April and hope you will rapidly see the benefits.
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Mark Stephens
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