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Matthias Ngeo edited this page Feb 28, 2020 · 22 revisions

Why does the project require Java 11 and above?

Chimera uses several new APIs and language features introduced in Java 9 & above.

  • Collection factory methods, i.e. List.of(...), Set.of(...), Map.of(...)
  • Local type inference
  • VarHandle API introduced to modify inaccessible fields in Brigadier classes

We could use Java 10, or Java 9 if we refrain from using the var syntax sugar. However, neither has LTS and are no longer supported. Hence Java 11 which has LTS as the minimum required version.

We understand that most servers and plugins are using Java 8; that most developers cannot/will not use the library. Nevertheless, we stand by our decision to use Java 11. We encourage developers and server owners to upgrade to Java 11+ to leverage on the improvements to the language and JVM over the 6 years ago since Java 8 was released.

Why does Chimera Commands require NMS?

Interactions between Brigadier and NMS are complex and intertwined. It is extremely difficult and inefficient to rely on reflection to dance between Spigot and NMS types. In addition, Cartesian types rely on the NMS ArgumentVec types which again makes it impractical to use reflection.

In summary, NMS provides better correctness guarantees and performance over reflection.

How do I use SNAPSHOT releases?

Use the nightly repository.

<repository>
  <id>chimera-snapshots</id>
  <url>https://repo.karuslabs.com/repository/chimera-snapshots/</url>
</repository>

What is Chimera's deprecation & Minecraft version support policy?

The project is stable and breaking API changes are extremely unlikely. That being said, breaking changes may be introduced in major or minor releases.

Chimera will only support the latest Minecraft version at the time of release. We have no plans to support older versions of the game.

Why doesn't Chimera Commands have a caching mechanism?

Early development builds of Chimera did support caching suggestions and parsed arguments. However, we quickly ran into issues that blocked progress.

Chiefly was the frequency at which the server was asked to provide suggestions which led to the cache being both bloated and stale, rendering it ineffective. It also caused memory leaks as it prevented the cleaning-up of Player objects.

In the end, we felt it to be more hassle than worth and that it can be better implemented in 3rd-party custom types if the need arises.

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