Apache Thrift page suggests minimum java version requirement as 1.7 . My app uses java version 1.6.95. Still I was able to compile and use apache thrift. Anyone has any idea about what this minimum version requirement is for?
The minimum Java version statement provided on the Apache Thrift web site is set by the community. This statement means that the committers will accept patches that use Java features which require Java 7. So while it may be the case that you can use 6 with the code version you have, you may also find that newer versions of Thrift will not work.
For example I think the TZLibTransport will be a problem as of 2015-05-29, it uses SYNC_FLUSH which is a 1.7 feature: https://github.com/apache/thrift/blob/bb98e97fd3c82117c87d23e3fb6b8bbd800784f2/lib/java/src/org/apache/thrift/transport/TZlibTransport.java.
New commits may create further incompatibilities with Java 6.
So if you are using Java 6 and everything is working for you that is good but I would be cautious when updating Thrift or using new parts of Thrift.
The referenced min ver doc page is: https://thrift.apache.org/docs/install/
which comes from: https://github.com/apache/thrift/blob/1568aef7d499153469131449ec682998598f0d3c/doc/install/README.md