A team I was on decided against Manifold precisely because we wanted to keep up with Java's twice-yearly version updates, and we didn't want a bespoke compiler plugin to lock us to an older version.

I think Manifold is extremely cool, and it does look like they're keeping up with the latest -- but the deep compiler magic it relies on really makes me nervous.

They are good about supporting latest JDK release and all LTS releases, going back to 8.

It’s Oracle’s saber rattling lately concerning plugins like Lombok and Manifold that make me more disappointed than nervous.

What rattling is that?

Yes, exactly -- the responsibility to keep up with Java versions does not, unfortunately, lie with Manifold alone. The deep magic they rely on also needs to remain accessible.

It is interesting through ;-)

Personally, I will probably introduce some of it to a project I'm working on. Here's why:

* It's relatively conservative - almost of all its work is done in compile time. Once you have a binary and it went through testing then Manifold is irrelevant.

* It's open source - I know it's not the same as "support" but the project has been around for a while and the author is active.

* Worst case scenario I can remove it - it would suck since I will need to rewrite code. But the compiler will point me at the exact lines of code I need to fix.