Which Java version should plugin authors target for plugin languages targeted at IDEA14+
Hi,
After I've did a refactoring on the plugin I'm working on, other collaborators sent messages that they are still using Java 6 + IDEA 14 and that they can't compile it anymore.
There's also a couple of features that we could better make use of from switching to a newer Java version like 7 or even 8.
I know that Mac users are still using Java 6 (or at least most of them, no?) but, stll, Java 6 has ended support almost one and a half years ago and I've seen there's an attempt to ship out IntelliJ IDEA bundled with Java 8 for Mac.
If this question has been answered or addressed already then I appologize, can you please paste the link here?
Thank you.
Kind regards
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Unfortunately there are still some serious bugs on Java 7 and 8 on OSX, see: https://intellij-support.jetbrains.com/entries/27854363-IDE-doesn-t-start-after-updating-to-Mac-OS-Yosemite-or-Mavericks. Note that although that document is over a year old many of the comments are very recent.
In particular, this one: https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8041900 is pretty much a show-stopper for me and is set to be fixed in JDK 9?!?! So I'll be on JDK 1.6 until 2016 probably.
I'd like to apologise on behalf of Oracle.
And if you'd like to have access to more language features than what Java 6 provides, consider using Kotlin for the development of your plugin. :) Especially with the new platform types introduced in Kotlin M9, writing IntelliJ plugin code in Kotlin is quite a pleasant experience.
I hadn't seen the platform types, that does look quite nice, although it seems like integrating it with the new nullity inference engine in v14 would be even nicer :-)
How good is the Java->Kotlin converter for existing code? I guess it won't always create idiomatic code, but does it at least create working code?