Shibboleth Developers

[Chad La Joie <>]

People on this list are going to get tired of hearing me talk about 
other containers, but JDK 1.3 is still used by a bunch of deployed 
application servers (as nice as Tomcat may be it doesn't have near the 
install base as Weblogic and Websphere).  Normally these 
"enterprise-class" app servers switch to a "new" JDK 2-3 years after it 
comes out... you know, after the kinks are worked out.  ;)  Then people 
will usually stay with a particular app server version (often times only 
patching or doing minor version bumps) for another 2 years or so because 
deploying new versions ain't cheap.

So, while I, personally, would have no problem telling people that the 
IdP runs on JDK 1.4 or above (I probably wouldn't even mind much saying 
1.5 and above), I don't think you can tell vendors that.  And if we want 
vendors to play nice with us, we'll have to play nice with them.  If we 
take that view, then things like the Java SP and OpenSAML need to run on 
JDK 1.3, even if it does have rough edges.

Perhaps a salient example.  A year ago, while at VT, I had to fight, and 
I mean fight, with Oracle to support JDK 1.3...  they wanted us using 1.2.

Wilcox, Mark wrote:
> I'd question the need to support JDK 1.3. Java 5 (aka JDK 1.5) has now 
> been out for over a year and JDK 1.4 for several. I just think 1.3 has 
> so many issues that doing things that make it easier to stay on 1.3 is a 
> bad strategic move, IMHO :).
>  
> Mark W.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* Scott Cantor 
> [mailto:]
> *Sent:* Mon 5/23/2005 4:29 PM
> *To:* Chad La Joie
> *Cc:* 
>
> *Subject:* Re: SHIB design call -- (5/23/2005), 3:00 pm est, noon pst
>
> Chad La Joie wrote:
>  > Hey, I'm not going to be able to make this one, had a set of meetings
>  > come up.  If there are things I can do to help, please let me know.  If
>  > not, my plan is to, early next week, deploy and test of Websphere and
>  > Weblogic.
>
> Steven asked about support for non-Sun or non-Tomcat, so I deferred for
> the beta. If we can incorporate that, that's fine by me.
>
> I could also use some help on a separate release track testing the
> opensaml code on JDK 1.3. I'm sure it doesn't work now, but finding the
> places I need to try and fix...
>
> -- Scott

--
Chad La Joie             315Q St. Mary's Hall
Project Sentinel         202.687.0124