Spark 2.7.0 beta 1

Yeah; I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be able to use this as a platform. I love Openfire as a server, but when I did a test only Spark seems to support all the features it offers. We’re moving to Java 7 on the desktops now and I’m having a hard time justifying two Java’s install on people machines. It’s like once the projects were spun off, development just seemed to stop.

You can use Spark with built-in Java, so you can only install Java 7 on your computers and Spark will still use 1.6 in his own folder.

Oracle is dropping support for Java 6 at the end of February, 2013 and we are replacing it with Java 7 in order to mitigate any risks associated with lack of support (incl. security updates).

We’ve successfully tested Spark 2.6.3 against Java 7 by giving it the file path to Java 7 JRE instead of the Java 6 JRE it keeps requesting at launch time. While we await Spark 2.7.0, we will need to modify the 2.6.3 release to remove this Java 6 JRE dependency and not annoy our end users every time they launch Spark!

Is it time to move on to another instant messaging solution commercial or open-source?

There is almost no active developers working on Spark, so i won’t hope to see 2.7.0 soon or 2.6.3 refactoring for Java 7.

You can use Java 7 for your system (java apps, web applets), but use Spark 2.6.3 with built-in Java 6. I don’t think this creates huge attack possibility, unless attack is directed at java applications using Java 6 and the attacker knows how to exploit Spark via such vulnerabilities.

Btw, Spark is only one of the clients. You can try another xmpp client (Pidgin, Psi, Instantbird, Gajim, etc.) and use it with Openfire, instead of Spark.

What happened to Spark development?

This http://bamboo.igniterealtime.org/browse/SPARK-INSTALL4J/history

That’s about 50 builds during the year, which means about 50 fixes, patches, new features. There is no official 2.7.0 release yet and i don’t know when or will it be, but i stopped caring about that and just use latest nightly builds from Bamboo and i’m fine.