The jOOQ 3.12 Open Source Edition will continue to support Java 8. The only things we gain from the JDK 11 dependency is:
- Updated logic for reflection when mapping into proxied default methods (that stuff has changed completely in JDK 9). This is a regression, which we can live with. The workaround is to write a custom
- Explicit dependency on the JDK 9 API, for which we provide a Java 8 compatible alternative via reactive streams anyway.
- JDBC 4.3 compatibility (mostly sharding). We currently don't use that yet.
We're not even using internally, outside of a few integration tests. So, we'll postpone the JDK 11 *requirement* (while supporting it nonetheless) to a later release, e.g. 3.13. We'll observe market share shifts. Currently Java 11's market share is a bit of a disappointment, so making it a requirement might be premature.