[IdPv3] Targeting Java 7

[Chad La Joie]

The developers have been discussing the possibility of targeting Java
7 for our next major release of our software.  This is primarily due
to the EOL of Java 6 in July 2012 (i.e. in about 8 months) which is
right around the time of the OpenSAML and IdP v3 releases.  We believe
that having people upgrade to Java 7 right at the start is better than
performing an upgrade right after the release or some months down the
road.

While not deciding factors, the us of Java 7 also gives us some nice-to-haves:
 * support for ECC cryptography (a set of algorithms that are
considered more performant than what we use today)
 * file/directory change notification (i.e. file stat) support that
would allow us to reload things like metadata right when they're
changed instead of periodically polling for changes
 * more performant scripting engines for those that have lots of
scripts in their resolver

Java 7 also gives us developers some nice-to-haves that makes our code
a bit cleaner.  For those that care: the diamond operator,
try-with-resource, and multi-catch exceptions.

Java 7 packages are currently available as MSI, RPM, and DEB packages.
 OS X support is under development and taking a bit longer as Apple
transitions its JRE code over to the OpenJDK project.  Open source
containers like Jetty, Tomcat, and JBoss support Java 7 already.  We
are assessing the current, or future, support for Java 7 in commercial
containers.

-- 
Chad La Joie
www.itumi.biz
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