[SOLVED] Java 17 Support for Cassandra 5

Java 17 Support for Cassandra 5

I have a question about what "support" means for JDK17 with Cassandra.

From the research I have done, Java 17 is supported in Cassandra 5.x, albeit experimentally.

https://cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest/cassandra/installing/installing.html states to pick either 17 or 11 to install with.

https://cassandra.apache.org/doc/5.0/cassandra/reference/java17.html states 17 is "experimental"

What defines "experimental", and what needs to happen to make support for Java 17 graduate from "experimental support" to "supported" ?

Solution

In general, the nature of an experimental feature in Cassandra is that it is:

Disabled by default (may require a cassandra.yml flag to enable)
Not recommended for production use (one flippant phrase commonly used, albeit not in the Cassandra project in particular, is "if it breaks, you get to keep both halves").

In general, features graduate to being considered production-ready when a project's maintainers trust that feature enough that they would use it in a high-stakes environment themselves. Use the cassandra-users mailing list to get an on-the-record response from the people making that decision about where they see the outstanding risk factors and what the roadmap to resolving them will be.