[ovirt-devel] oVirt master UI now uses GWT 2.8

Hello folks, we're using the latest GWT version in master UI now [1]. We can start using Java 8 syntax in our frontend code. GWT 2.8 also brings partial support for Java 8 standard library APIs, see "JDK emulation" at [2] for details. [1] https://gerrit.ovirt.org/#/q/topic:gwtupgrade [2] http://www.gwtproject.org/release-notes.html#Release_Notes_2_8_0_RC1 Effectively, all Engine (Java Maven) modules [3] are now Java 8 source & target compilant. [3] except backend/manager/modules/extensions-api-root With this upgrade, the GWT UI should be a bit faster - generated JavaScript should take advantage of new web APIs (e.g. using ES6 Maps to implement Java HashMap) as well as general performance improvements (e.g. using a faster "long" emulation). GWT 2.8 removes deRPC (direct-eval RPC) mechanism but that's OK because we're already using the standard GWT RPC [4]. [4] https://gerrit.ovirt.org/#/c/65735/ There are no changes to existing build & development process: - debugging via Java IDE (aka Classic Dev Mode) remains the default debug method - debugging via browser (aka Super Dev Mode) can be enabled via DEV_BUILD_GWT_SUPER_DEV_MODE flag [5] [5] example: $ make gwt-debug DEBUG_MODULE=webadmin DEV_BUILD_GWT_SUPER_DEV_MODE=1 Note that in GWT 2.8 the Super Dev Mode is the new default debug method (with Classic Dev Mode being deprecated). There are still some post-upgrade tasks to do, we're tracking them on Trello: https://trello.com/b/o26RrVLz/post-gwt-2-8-upgrade-tasks If you encounter any issues related to GWT compilation or debugging, let me know. Regards, Vojtech