Would a tip-and-tail release policy fit phoss-SMP and the phax libraries?

[gregjotau]

First, thank you for merging the Java 25 Docker work and the related fixes into phoss-SMP 8.2.0. We have now deployed 8.2.0 successfully and verified the SQL image on OpenJDK 25.0.3.

Would you be open to documenting or gradually adopting the OpenJDK tip-and-tail model for phoss-SMP and, where useful, the wider phax library family?

https://openjdk.org/jeps/14

A possible shape could be:

• Keep one actively evolving tip on master/latest releases, where current dependencies and JDK capabilities can be adopted.
• Designate selected older release lines as tails and restrict them to security patches and genuinely critical fixes, with as little backporting as possible.
• Choose the Java source baseline independently for each train. Existing Java 17 consumers would not need to be abandoned simply because the tip moves forward.
• Test the tip on the current GA JDK and the next early-access JDK, and publish current SMP application images on the current GA JRE when the trusted base images are available.

This is not a request to raise every source baseline immediately or to maintain a large branch matrix. The goal is to make the distinction between the innovation path and the low-churn maintenance path explicit, so old compatibility requirements do not indefinitely stall the tip.

A concrete next step would be running the maintained phoss-SMP images on JRE 26 while retaining Java 17 source/target compatibility. Eclipse Temurin 26.0.2 JRE images are available for amd64 and arm64, but the official Tomcat 10.1 image does not yet publish jre26/jdk26 variants. I would prefer to wait for or help add those official variants rather than duplicate Tomcat image assembly here.

Would this direction fit how you want to maintain phoss-SMP and the related libraries? I would be happy to prepare the JRE 26 change once the official Tomcat base tags are available.

The missing official Tomcat variants are now tracked at docker-library/tomcat#341.

[gregjotau]

Immediate compatibility step: PR #516 adds Java 26 to the existing 17/21/25 build matrix while keeping release 17 bytecode. The complete GitHub Actions run has passed on all four JDKs with MySQL 8 and MongoDB 8, including Java 26.0.2: https://github.com/phax/phoss-smp/actions/runs/32636287759

[phax]

I started https://github.com/phax/meta/blob/master/TipAndTail.md - lets see where it tails ;-)

[phax]

Well, so my last big update (JDK 11 to JDK 17) was last summer - so I shall stick to the current tip train for another year. However, I will try to bump the applications before that to get feedback early