Android switches to native Java 8 support

From InfoWorld: Android's mobile application build system will natively support Java 8 features going forward, with Google deprecating the Jack toolchain.

Jack has served as a toolchain to compile Java source code into Android dex byte code, with Java providing the basis of Android development. But now, Google wants to support Java 8 features directly in the current javax and dx set of tools.

Existing tools and plugins dependent on the Java class file format still should work, said Google Product Manager James Lau. Google plans to launch the native support as part of its Android Studio IDE in coming weeks.

Google had tested Java 8 support through Jack. "Over time, we realized the cost of switching to Jack was too high for our community when we considered the annotation processors, byte code analyzers, and rewriters impacted," said Lau. Developers can keep using Jack to build Java 8 code until the new support is available, and Lau predicted that the migration would mean little to no work.

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