Thanks for the update! Will moving the minimum Java version to Java 17 also allow GraphQL Java to make greater use of modern Java features, such as records and sealed classes, in future releases? It would be helpful to understand how this change may benefit developers using GraphQL Java.

Moving to Java 17 does indeed allow the code base to use features such as records and sealed classes. But these aren't really the driver of moving to a new base JVM version.

Rather its really about being able to "depend" on certain Java behaviours (say around memory) and reducing the test matrix we have to support in builds.

I don't think this really this is about "this change may benefit developers using GraphQL Java." since Java is such an excellent platform that cares about backwards compatibility so code build on Java 11 runs on Java 21 no worries. I don't think this helps or hinders consuming developers.

We have traditionally been "very slow" to update the minimum Java version needed because we know there are companies that move quite slowly in JVM adoption. But the JVM release cycle has gotten much faster in the last 4 years and companies are also adopting JVM versions faster and hence we need to move up a LTS version.