Feature Planning for openHAB 5

[holgerfriedrich]

(Incomplete) Development Plan for openHAB 5

Functional and Visible Features

• Support Matter
• Switch to 64-bit, drop support for 32-bit (not a feature, but highly visible ;-))

Technical Features (not necessarily visible to users)

• Switch to Java 21, drop Java 17
• Upgrade libraries only available for Java 21 or 64-bit: GraalJS, Apache Derby
• Optional (but highly appreciated): Karaf 4.5 (i.e., Jetty >9.x) - depending on progress

Tooling and Documentation

• RRD conversion (format is dependent on platform)
• Update hardware recommendations (64-bit, more memory)
• Check and maybe extend documentation: transition to new hardware, backup and restore
• openHABian to support necessary conversions on RPI
• Optional: aid InfluxDB transition v1.8 -> v2.x (as InfluxDB is our recommended DB for Grafana and supported by openHABian)
• Marketplace - clarify if further measures are necessary to allow deploying for 4.x / 32-bit after transition to 64-bit in OH 5

Background

There has been a long discussion in #1689 regarding the rollout of Java 21 and the end of life of 32-bit systems. To cut a long story short, Java 21 and the EOL for 32-bit systems should be coupled with next major release, OH 5. A possible timeline is not aligned yet (and should depend on the progress on the items listed above). The earliest possible date is summer 2025 (derived from the progress on the user visible feature "support Matter").

Let's use the list above as a starting point for a discussion. It is for sure incomplete - please comment, and I will update the list. Maybe you have features in mind that could be a selling point for our OH 5 release.

[wborn]

We could also create issues for everything instead of maintaining the list here and add them to a project: https://github.com/orgs/openhab/projects

[holgerfriedrich]

@wborn I created a project containing the items mentioned above.
https://github.com/orgs/openhab/projects/11/views/1
I misused items as heading to give it some structure. Can you please check if the order is reasonable when you view it?
Another idea would be using custom OH5xxxx tags.
WDYT?

[lsiepel]

If i'm not mistaken, it would also be possible to upgrade Graal from 22.0.2 (three year old by then) to 24.x
https://github.com/openhab/openhab-addons/blob/16e1c64bec098bfe2106a9ea3abe6957b4b444c0/bundles/org.openhab.automation.jsscripting/pom.xml#L25

Nevermind: i see it is already on the list ;-)