Java 8 (Java 1.8) support II

[Lonzak]

Since you already closed the last issue - I couldn't even reply anymore. I would appreciate if you would allow me to respond and let a discussion take place and not close this issue so quickly.

If you need to use Java 8 then you can use version 1.3.36 or earlier.

Yes but this means no bugfixes, security fixes etc anymore.

The latest version of the Spring library now requires Java 17: https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-framework/wiki/Spring-Framework-Versions
Pdfbox also requires Java 11 now:
https://github.com/apache/pdfbox/blob/trunk/pom.xml#L130

The examples you referenced are all major updates:
It is pdfbox 4.0 (note that there is a 2.0 and 3.0 Branch), which isn't even released yet.
And Spring Framwork 5.3 is still maintained, bugfixed and does still support Java 8.

=> So my first point is: Such a major update needs to be reflected in the version: openPDF 2.0.0. and not 1.3.X
=> Secondly I wanted to ask whether other users also face this problem - if I am the only one - ok - but maybe there are others facing this? So we should discuss our options here. Which could be to maintain a Java8 compatible branch ...

[andreasrosdal]

OpenPDF will require Java 11 from now on. Please respect this decision. There are multiple roads to Rome, and regularly updating Java versions is part of the technological progress. If there is a need for bugfixes to the last Java 8 compatible version in the future that will be made available.

[andreasrosdal]

I recommend that you please try to update to Java 11 or later. The new Java version requirement is clearly described in the release notes.

Java 8 was released on March 18, 2014.

[asturio]

The other discussion still open, as I think it is important to know it many users are still using Java 8.
But as @andreasrosdal said, it is very important since java 9 to update your projects to newer versions of Java. And it is not easy to have many branches for different Java Versions.
At this time Java 8, 11, 17 and 21 are supported LTS. But probably OpenPDF will like continue for some time using Java 11, and at some point switch to Java 17, and at another point to 21 (and at that time there will be hopefully now so many jumps extra to do). In every such point, the old version of OpenPDF won't get much attention anymore. Probably only dependency updates.