RFC: Remove support for Java 8 in V2 about powertools-lambda-java HOT 7 OPEN

I would remove support for Java 8 AND Java 11 -- or at least mark the support for Java 11 as deprecated. Migrations from Java 11 to Java 17 are easier, usually there is nothing to do. Java 21 is the new LTS and therefore in my (client) projects I'm already considering Java 17 as "deprecated".

V2 could drop the support for Java 8 and Java 11. Thanks for the detailed writeup!

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This RFC is detailed and gives a lot of insight into the roadmap which is great! A Java 17 baseline would have been ideal but I can see why you are going with 11. Looking forward to the v2 release :D

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Thanks for your participation everyone. We're end of Feb and it looks like the majority is agree to move away from Java 8 in v2. We even have people suggesting to move directly to Java 17, but the step is probably too big yet.
Together with @scottgerring, and with all your support, we now act that v2 won't support Java 8 anymore and minimum version will be Java 11 !

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Thank you for opening this conversation and the detailed analysis.
I think setting a new baseline for the next major version of Powertools is a good decision. Version 2 will probably be around for a long time and will profit from a current base version.
Many other important frameworks are following the same route.
I wonder though, what would be the next minimal Java version for Powertools. Would that be 11?

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Thanks for your feedback and support @roamingthings. Yes we would keep 11 as the minimal.

Java 8 on AL1 will be deprecated end of 2023, which hopefully will convince some users to leave Java 8.
But Java 8 itself will remain for some time (December 2030). We don't know if there will be a Java 8 on AL3 when AL2 will be deprecated.

But with Java 21 today, plus Java 25 in two years, it becomes very complicated to support a version that was released almost 10 years ago.

We'll work on having a V2 stable enough to live for a few years, just like v1 did (we started in 2016). But we also would like to avoid parking breaking changes for years too. Look at the metrics for example, we still use the v1 of the EMF library. We're not yet thinking about v3 obviously but maybe we'll introduce a cadence in major releases (one every x years). Anyway that's not the topic, let's talk about the end of Java 8:

image generated by bing generator with prompt: "winding walking path that disappear in the horizon" and modified by myself

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Thanks for the feedback @AdamBien.

Based on the metrics we have today, it's very hard to say that we remove support for Java 11. Java 11 represents an important part of the Java runtime usage in Lambda as of today. Even if it's easier to migrate to 17, we cannot really say to the majority that we stop supporting the version they use. But thanks for the support on Java 8.

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