Migrating Choco-solver to Java 11 (or even 17)

[cprudhom]

I'm considering moving from Hava 8 to Java 11 (or 17) for the source code and the compiled .class files.
Indeed, even though Java 8 will be supported until December 2030, I believe the code can benefit from a more recent version.
That would lead to a major release of Choco.

[jgFages]

Hi, it is a good question indeed.
On my side, I am impressed by the reliability of Java 8 whereas I sometimes have JVM crashes - some kinds of seg fault - on Java 11 OpenJDK distribution (on both Mac and Windows)...

[dimitri-justeau]

I don't know whether there are fundamental differences in stability and performance between Java 11, 17, or 8. However, if Java's new version provides helpful features and syntax elements for Choco, I would be in favour of migrating Choco to newer Java versions. Indeed, installing a newer Java version is straightforward in every OS, so if it brings improvement to developers and users I don't see why we shouldn't do it (and the current version of Choco will remain compatible with Java 8).

[cprudhom]

I observe that some dependencies (like ANTLR or JGrapht) are moving to 11 and we are stuck to "old" version since there is no backward compatibilities. Actually, this is the major drawback, from choco's users side, to have to move to J11 or get stuck to J8 and a freeze version. About VM behavior, I can't testify.
On the other hand, moving to 11 or 17 will first offer better coding opportunities :)

Note that the three versions (8, 11 and 17) are LTS.