Is 1.4.1 stable or is it best to stick with 1.4?

[Janet Wilson]

Just wondering if I should go to 1.4.1? I don't have a compelling reason to go to 1.4.1, but usually like to stay current (however, not "bleeding edge" - if you understand what I mean!). Any advice or general rules of thumb for how to handle upgrades now and in the future?
As usual, thanks! Janet

[Thomas Paul]

There seems to be few small bugs in 1.4.1 so you might want to stay with 1.4 for the moment.

[Garion Winters]

Yup. I know its not really anything special, but all I can say is what is likely obvious: wait a bit to see what others say about it, and if there are too many problems wait a bit till they fix it. Also, if there isn't anything coming from it you need, it wouldn't hurt to hang around a bit (though you might not want to stick back forever )

[Vin Kris]

I had downloaded 1.4.1-beta some time ago and it hasn't given me any problems since. But recently I downloaded 1.4.1 (don't remember the date - it is no longer called beta) to install on a laptop and the damn thing crashed on a simple program asking me open a bug report with Sun. Guess it's just my bad luck that I tried installing at the wrong time. I downloaded the 1.4.0 and it works fine.

[Janet Wilson]

Thanks Thomas, Garion, and Vin.
I was also wondering if there is a general rule of thumb to apply when dealing with new releases from Sun (since I'm new to dealing with this company and their practices). In other words, for those of you actually know what the acronym DOS stands for, it used to be somewhat understood (prior to 6.x) that you didn't bother applying the even version releases of DOS because they were dogs. Therefore, is it common practice to:
1. Wait until a release has been out "x" months (where "x"=3???)?
2. Never install Java "sub"releases ending in "1" (e.g.-1.4.1 is bad, but 1.4.2 is good)?
3. Etc.
I didn't make myself clear that I didn't need to know some of the more obvious things, but was hoping that there may be some rules of thumb to abide by? Does that make any sense?
Thanks for your help! Janet

[Frank Hale]

I haven't had any trouble with 1.4.1 on Linux or Windows. I run Jext, Jedit, Netbeans, JBoss, etc.... No problems whatsoever.
Have fun!
[ October 11, 2002: Message edited by: Frank Hale ]

[Dirk Schreckmann]

Therefore, is it common practice to...
I'd argue that an answer concerning an actual timeframe or version number would be mostly blah-blah nonsense.
Each release will have bugs (and in the case of some large software companies, critical bugs will continue be discovered and fixed even after many years of the product being on the market). Are the bugs likely to affect your project? You never know.
Common sense (perhaps): If you'd rather play it safe, then don't use the latest release as previous releases are (maybe) more likely to have had the major bugs worked out.
In the case of Sun's recent releases of Java, I've been impressed at their lengthy and delayed release process. It would seem that each new version of Java has been thoroughly tested over the course of many months by thousands of beta and pre-release testers from the general public (where the product will be used).
So, personally, I'll gladly use the latest and greatest official release on my personal projects feeling confident that it's been well tested and that possible critical bugs will be quickly fixed.
And that's probably enough blah-blah nonsense from me.
Good Luck.

[Max Habibi]

1.4.1 is more stable then 1.4.0.
All best,
M, author
The Sun Certified Java Developer Exam with J2SE 1.4

[Ilja Preuss]

I use 1.4.1 because 1.4.0 has some serious bugs in the debugging API, hindering debugging in Eclipse. I don't have any problems with it.

[Thomas Paul]

There have been some issues reported with 1.4.1 that were not problems in 1.4.0 but overall it does seem that 1.4.1 is more stable.

[Dirk Schreckmann]

I could have been a bit more careful with my wording. When I was typing "release", I probably should have typed "1.X release" (the ones where the big new features are introduced).