Replying to stoecker:
For the Linux version I hope you remember the openSUSE Java 8 issues until few weeks ago and our resulting suggestion to use Java 7 instead.
I totally forgot that, but I see the bug is fixed, so that's not a problem anymore.
Regarding the need for a switch - Is there anything where we say: "We want this" like it was for Java 7, which had a lot of useful new stuff?
Java 8 is a major release, there are a lot of good new stuff we can use:
- Lambdas, method references, default and static interface methods: powerful new syntaxes allowing to write more compact code
- Stream API: more compact code for iterations
- Paraller sorting: improve performance
- Predicate, Function: may replace/simplify our own Predicate and Function classes
- Base64: may replace our own Base64 class
- new Date/Time API: simplify all date-related stuff. May replace our DateUtils class
- String joining: may replace Utils.join()
- Optional parameters: may simplify null-handling
- HTTP URL Permissions: may be useful to enforce imagery blacklist
Java 8 also contains:
- new javascript engine for better performance
- lot of security/crypto enhancements
- Unicode/CLDR improvements
I'm sure there are even more stuff I did not see yet :)
