planned switch to Java 5

[bilic]

Hi all,
For the next release of Open Quark, we plan to require Java 5 or
higher. In particular, Open Quark 1.5.1 is the last planned release of
Open Quark that works with Java 1.4 or higher.

Switching to Java 5 will let us support dual-language Java/CAL
programming better, remove some workarounds to bugs in the Java
libraries, especially related to file IO, expose a number of useful
new Java libraries, especially related to concurrency, and generally
make CAL's Java APIs more type-safe and appealing. It will also
probably help those who want to play with the Java part of CAL's
implementation.

The downside is that Java 1.4 will no longer be sufficient. We plan
to offer archival builds of old versions at some point, and in
particular Open Quark 1.5.1 will continue to be available to those who
want Java 1.4 support.

Cheers,
Bo

[Edward]

Hi all,
For the next release of Open Quark we have updated the platform to use
Java 5. The Java implementation has been fully generified and cleaned
up, and we are making full use of Java 5 features, including new
language features (such as enums and enhanced for loops) and updated
libraries (such as the new StringBuilder class). The bytecode
generator has also been updated to produce Java class files conforming
to the Java 5 class file format.

The pros (and cons) of the update have been mentioned by Bo, but I
would like to say that among the members of the team we have already
felt some nice benefits from this update as we have been adding new
features to the platform.

Cheers,
- Edward

[Tom Davies]

It's nice to know what's in your collections, for a start, isn't it?
Of course type inference would save you all that typing, but it is
still a plus :-)