ODK Aggregate: Deprecation of the Java 7 runtime environment on App Engine Standard

Hi all,
In January 2019 (yes 2019) Google App Engine will shutdown Java 7 runtime. I'm afraid I don't understand Aggregate enough to know if I need to transition to Java 8, or if I'll be fine since our project should finish before Jan 2019. So my question to the forum is: do I need to transition? How would I do that?

I asked google support and here's what they wrote. I don't understand the instructions at the link for how to transition, nor am I convinced that I really need to transition to Java 8:

"Yes, you can still use Java 7 runtime until its shutdown on January 16, 2019 but some services running in Java 7 were already deprecated. Updates and support are already unavailable. Although Java 8 is backwards compatible with Java 7, I would highly recommend to upgrade to avoid further issues or concerns using Java 7 runtime. You may refer to this documentation [1] on how you to upgrade to Java 8 runtime.

With this, I hope I was able to address your concern. If you have additional questions or need further help from our end, feel free to respond on this message and I'll be glad to help.

Regards,

Maniel
Google Cloud Platform Support, Manila

Link/s:
[1] - https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard/java/migrating-to-java8"

Thanks in advance,
John

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Hi @John_Quattrochi, I got this alert as well, and it’s on my radar! If you have a moment, can you file this as an issue on https://github.com/opendatakit/aggregate/ so we don’t forget?

Also, please introduce yourself here. I'd also encourage you to add a real picture as your avatar because it helps build community!

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To be explicit, @John_Quattrochi, there is no action for you to take at this time. If your data collection campaign ends before January 16th 2019, you won't need to do anything at all!

As @yanokwa says there will need to be a change made to Aggregate's code to support the change. This will likely be part of the next release. Upgrade instructions will be provided at that time.

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Wonderful -- thank you very much!

Hi Yaw, LN and John,

Thank you very much for the information and update.

Currently my project is running with Java 7 run time as a free tier project in GCP-GAE. I am getting messages from the GC support team to upgrade to java 8 run time or your project will be automatically upgraded starting from Sep 2018. As per the sponsor, there is no further revision to the project and we will be completing the data collection before Dec 2018. I hope I should not worry about this upgrade.

Regards,

Senthil

Chances are Google will do the auto-update on Java and it'll be fine. And if it's not fine, you can roll back. That said, if you want to be very sure your project will work smoothly, it would be the safest to do this now:

  1. Back up your data using ODK Briefcase https://github.com/opendatakit/briefcase/releases/latest
  2. Upgrade to the latest version of Aggregate https://github.com/opendatakit/aggregate/releases/latest

This way you are doing the change on your own time and at your own pace and you are removing the risk of the Google auto-update causing problems.

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