General enhancements

Several enhancements are provided in HCL Domino 14.5 EAP Drop 1.

Core updates

  • The target platform for Notes/Domino jar files is set to 1.8. That means they can be used with any JVM that supports a target release of 1.8 or above.
  • JVM has been upgraded to the following version of Java 21 LTS release:
    openjdk version "21.0.3" 2024-04-16 LTS
    IBM Semeru Runtime Open Edition 21.0.3.0 (build 21.0.3+9-LTS)
    Eclipse OpenJ9 VM 21.0.3.0 (build openj9-0.44.0, JRE 21 Windows 10 amd64-64-Bit Compressed References 20240416_179 (JIT enabled, AOT enabled)
    OpenJ9   - b0699311c7
    OMR      - 254af5a04
    JCL      - ac8f341bc20 based on jdk-21.0.3+9)

JVM upgrade for IBM i

For IBM i, the JVM has been upgraded from Java 8 to Java 17. Therefore, only IBM i 7.4 and IBM i 7.5 are supported, at the required patch level listed for Java 17. For more information, see HCL Domino 14.5 for IBM i Software Requirements (Early Access Program Drop 1).

Eclipse upgrade

Standard Notes, Domino Administrator, Domino Designer, and XPages are upgraded from Eclipse 4.22 to 4.30.

InstallShield upgrade

The Notes client for Windows now uses InstallShield 2023 R1.

Extension Manager Changes

On Windows, if a fully qualified path is not specified for a library to be loaded, the Extension Manager API (invoked by the ExtMgr_Addins notes.ini variable) no longer searches the path for the library.

Instead, by default, this API searches the Notes or Domino executable directory, the Windows System directory, and the Windows directory. You can use notes.ini variables of the format ExtMgr_Dir<#>=<path> to specify up to nine additional locations to search.

Example: ExtMgr_Dir3=d:\Application\Libraries
Note: In certain circumstances, such as when the value includes a space, you must enclose it in quotation marks.