[xwiki-devs] [Brainstorming] Remove Tomcat 7.x support? (was Re: [VOTE] Officially support for Tomcat 9)

On 13 Apr 2019, at 11:39, Vincent Massol <vincent(a)massol.net> wrote: Since it’s a vote I think I am -1 to support both Tomcat 8.x and 9.x at the same level (I could change that to a -0 if everyone else agrees). For 2 reasons: * I feel we’re don’t have enough agent power to support so many configs - we already have too many IMO, and each new config increases the test time exponentially. * I’d really like that we continue having a single version for each infra server in our docker-latest job. So I’m proposing one of the following 2 options: Option 1: Tomcat 8.x stays the supported version ======= * Continue delivering XWiki on Tomcat 8.x by default. For ex the Docker image continue to be on Tomcat 8.x, see the tags on https://hub.docker.com/_/xwiki?tab=description * Offer a preview for Tomcat 9.x but don’t consider it as being officially supported. This means mentioning the “preview” in the various docs. * On the test side, this means adding it to docker-unsupported Option 2: Tomcat 9.x becomes the latest supported version ======= * Consider that Tomcat 9.x is now the latest version of Tomcat, i.e. make it go in the docker-latest build (ie all tests execute on it). Executed daily. * Consider that Tomcat 8.x is now an older version of Tomcat (but still supported) and move all Tomcat 8.x tests to docker-all (ie only smoke tests on it). Executed weekly. * Upgrade the official Docker image to use Tomcat 9.x. More generally upgrade all distributions to use Tomcat 9.x. Note that we support only 1 version of Tomcat in the Docker images we distribute. The only question I’m asking is whether Tomcat 9.x is stable enough for using it in production vs Tomcat 8.x (8.5.x to be precise). Note that Tomcat 8.5.x contains backports from Tomcat 9.x AFAIK and the main difference is just the supported Servlet spec (AFAICS). So if we wish to make a move, I’d prefer option 2 but I don’t know if I know enough about Tomcat 8.5.x vs Tomcat 9.x in production to make an educated decision. I’d be curious to know if users would be ok to run Tomcat 9.x in production. Now we would still support 8.5.x so users who want to stay on Tomcat 8.5.x can. WDYT? Thanks -Vincent PS: I thought I saw a jira issue being closed on this topic, did I dream it or did you anticipate the vote results? ;)