End of Java 5 Support at Runtime for Sonar Platform

by fabrice bellingard|

    This is it! After talking about it, internally at SonarSource, for 2 years and after a failed attempt last year, we are discontinuing the support of Java 5 runtime for the Sonar platform. Here are a few questions you might have on this:


    What does it means exactly?
    This means that you will require a JVM greater than 6 to execute Sonar Server or Sonar Analyzers. So far, these could be run also on a JVM 5.

    Can I still analyze my Java 5 project with Sonar?
    Absolutely, you will still be able to analyze your Java 5 projects the very same way.

    What is the reason for this?
    There are 2 main reasons for doing this:

    • Oracle stopped Java 5 support a long time ago and it is now time to move on for us
    • This will enable us to benefit from many libraries or versions of libraries that only support a JVM 6


    It also has nice side effects on the performances. For example, our parsers will run 20% faster when you move from Java 5 to Java 6.

    Why did we back out last year?
    We made an attempt last year, but encountered a couple of issues. The main one was that Sonar Jenkins plugin did not let you choose the JVM you want to use for the Sonar analysis - it had to be the same as the one configured for the job. This was fixed in version 2.0 of the plugin.

    Can I still execute Sonar with a JVM 5?
    You might be able to but we will only provide support if you use a JVM 6.

    Please come on the user mailing list, should you have any question or wanted to discuss this further.