[jsword-devel] Forking JSword

[DM Smith]

Hi all

I’ve recently retired and as a New Year’s Resolution, will be working on JSword and later BibleDesktop. In my absence in the last 10 years (it really has been that long!), AndBible and STEPBible forks of JSword have had many commits. The main JSword repository has had some changes. During this time AndBible has incorporated many of the STEPBible changes, but is not current with the STEPBible changes.



I would like for us to reconcile these differences, if possible. Also adding lead developers from AndBible and STEPBible as committers to the JSword repository, so that going forward a single code base can be maintained.

I’ve been spending 2+ hrs a day for a while now on this. Evaluating but not making changes.

Right now AndBible is a little bit behind the master JSword repository. Mostly, the changes are a few pull requests that I just applied. There are a couple more, but they have conflicts. And 2 should be evaluated for impact to AndBible and STEPBible.

Right now, JSword is compatible with Java 7, which is no longer supported. AndBible still has a need to support Java 7/8 for 2% of their user base. STEP and BibleDesktop aren’t limited. It’d need to be changed to compile with Java 9 or later, even if no new language features are used.

The most recent Ant, requires Java 11. Running Ant with Java 11 but building with Java 8 shouldn’t be a problem.

Many of the dependencies of JSword can be readily updated to the latest and greatest. Lucene and Apache HTTP Components are exceptions.

Feedback is appreciated.

In His Service,
	DM