[MBCook]

For us 8 to 17 was tough due to a lot of things you weren’t supposed to be using going away (sun packages). But TONS of libraries did it anyway. And the move from javax to jakarta for a lot of things in there was also tough.

If you could get through that, you’re golden. From what I’ve seen going to 21 or 25 look easy. They’re just adding features, the big upheavals of doing the long needed cleanup are over.

I expect keeping up to date to be far easier from now on.

[cesarb]

> For us 8 to 17 was tough due to a lot of things you weren’t supposed to be using going away (sun packages). But TONS of libraries did it anyway.

AFAIK, these libraries did so because there was no alternative, and some of the changes in Java 9 and later were done to provide them with an alternative. The only thing left is Signal/SignalHandler, which AFAIK still has no alternative outside the sun.* packages.

[samus]

The move from javax to jakarta was not really connected to the changes in the language. It is very much recommended to not do these upgrades simultaneously.

[MBCook]

Right. It was a copyright issue, I know.

We didn’t do that one giant jump. We moved from 8 to 17 in one step, then in a separate step upgraded Tomcat requiring the jakarta changes later.

I guess I tend to think of them as one “modernizing“ combo even though they’re not.

[samus]

Indeed, exactly the same process we did.

[cesarb]

> The move from javax to jakarta was not really connected to the changes in the language.

It sort of was; it was caused by Java no longer coming with the J2EE libraries. Before that, J2EE could be considered part of Java; now that it's a separate project, they were forced to rename the packages.

[samus]

The JDK didn't come with these packages anymore. They were never part of core Java.