For a very long time now, Minecraft has been targeting Java 6, and the most accepted reason being that the Mac clients do not have native support to download any other version of Java. But today, it’s time. It’s time to make that upgrade. Mojang is soon completing their upgrade to the Mac launcher that will bundle Java 8, eliminating the final obstruction to upgrading Minecraft to a newer and supported Java version.
Today, we announce that SpongeAPI and its implementations will be moving to Java 8 fullstop. If you’re renting a server from a professional Minecraft Server hoster, you may already be running Java 8. If you are certain you’re not running the server on Java 8, but an older version, you will need to upgrade.
While it may be some time before we do make the move to targeting Java 8, we encourage you to already have upgraded to Java 8 on all machines regardless, not doing so is opening the possibility of security issues.
For developers
What does this mean? It means in the API, we’ll be dropping the use of Guava’s Optional in favor of Java’s Optional. While the two do the same things, one is born from Java and the other is born from a dependency. There are quite a few other places throughout the API that will change, but for the most part, the implementations will benefit from this move. If you are making any contributions to the implementation, be sure to take a stab at learning some of the new features of Java 8 and employ them in your implementations!
IMO we should have a stable release for Java 6, for any servers who can’t upgrade for whatever reason.
I hope that refactoring won’t take time away from implementation as that is the more important thing.
I do think moving from guava’s Optional to java’s will cause unnecessary hassle for developers but that’s just my opinion.
There’s absolutely no reason for servers to be running Java 6. Quite literally, no reason whatsoever. Just like there’s no reason for people not to update to Java 8. Even if it comes down to their servers being hosted, their hosts should know better and update already.
I really dont know why mc didnt update to java 8 a long time ago. If you were one of the few mac users still running java 6, it may have been the kick to do things manually… Again
There seem to be issues with switching from Java6 to Java8 on older OSX versions. However Mojang will ship their own Java8 with MC on OSX in the future -> problem solved. That said Sponge will update to Java 8 too.
It’s because the Mac launcher is locked to the Java 6 distributed by Apple. Until Mojang pushes the update for the Mac Launcher, it still requires Java 6 and runs on Java 6 to launch, even if the game instance is using a different java version.
OSX 10.6.8+ can upgrade to 10.8/9+ for free and get java 7+, which is like saying Windows XP can upgrade to 10 for free, the versions that have to run java 6 are as ridiculously old as java 6 is
quite glad this is happening but i do share similar concerns to @simon816, hopefully the change has little issues so you guys can keep working hard on implementation (i’m looking at @gabizou for dem Pixelmon goodies ;))
I’m not sure this says what you intended it to say…
Anyway, bring on Java 8. It will save considerable hassle explaining the target Java version.
The Docs will be updated in short order to reflect this delightful development. Thanks!
This seems like a very straightforward update, I am glad to see something like this finally being upgraded and used. Hopefully it can provide better performance.