Note: this was initially written when we bumped the required version to 9. About a week later, we bumped it again to 11, which is a LTS release. We are considering one more move, from 11 to 17.
See https://kolmafia.us/threads/java-8-now-required-for-kolmafia.24547/ if you want more backstory.
Java 8 was released back in 2014. Since then, Java has moved to a much more frequent release cycle, adding many language features and greatly improving the standard library.
In part due to reported issues tied to version detection, but also to use industry-standard tooling for formatting in a forward-compatible fashion (due to a change in Java 16+), we are now requiring Java 9 to build and run KoLmafia.
However, Java 9 itself is no longer directly supported, as it isn't a long-term support (LTS) release. We strongly recommend upgrading to Java 17 (the latest LTS release), as we intend to further upgrade our codebase in the near future to take advantage of some of these new features.
As last time, if you're still using Java 8, you'll get an error trying to start KoLmafia. Upgrading to Java 17 should resolve that issue.
See https://kolmafia.us/threads/java-8-now-required-for-kolmafia.24547/ if you want more backstory.
Java 8 was released back in 2014. Since then, Java has moved to a much more frequent release cycle, adding many language features and greatly improving the standard library.
In part due to reported issues tied to version detection, but also to use industry-standard tooling for formatting in a forward-compatible fashion (due to a change in Java 16+), we are now requiring Java 9 to build and run KoLmafia.
However, Java 9 itself is no longer directly supported, as it isn't a long-term support (LTS) release. We strongly recommend upgrading to Java 17 (the latest LTS release), as we intend to further upgrade our codebase in the near future to take advantage of some of these new features.
As last time, if you're still using Java 8, you'll get an error trying to start KoLmafia. Upgrading to Java 17 should resolve that issue.
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