Idea:

Sun Java 1.4 has:

• end of public updates - Oct 2008
• end of Premier Support - Feb 2010
• end of Extended Support - Feb 2013
• see http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/eol-135779.html

IBM Java 1.4:

• is no longer Generally Available (GA) since Dec 2004;
• its End Of Servcie (EOS) will expire on September 2013:
• see https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/jdk/lifecycle/

According to various sources, most popular are Java6 and Java7; Java1.4 has a fraction of market right now:

• http://www.statowl.com/java.php
  although the report above shows Java version in web browser. Production environment may be different (especially regarding IBM Java).

Benefits:

Dropping support for Java 1.4 would ease Clover development a lot, as we could:

• directly use Java5 generics in code
• replace raw collections (List, Map, Set etc) by typed collections (List<Foo> etc) in code
• get rid of Retrotranslator (2x faster build )
• it opens a door to introduce generic-based libraries in Clover code (for example replace Apache Commons by Guava)

Tasks:

• update Supported-Platforms page
• remove retrotranslator from build scripts
• update bamboo / maven configurations
• affects Clover, Clover-for-Maven2&3, Clover-for-Eclipse, Clover-for-IDEA (note that Clover-for-Grails already need JDK1.5 or above)

Out of scope:

• replacing existing raw collections by typed ones (like List -> List<Foo> ), introducing foreach loops etc
  • this will be done gradually during daily development