Why does Yourkit 8.X is recommended to profile only java 5 applications?

Question

When upgrading yourkit profiler I've noticed the following message at their web site:

YourKit Java Profiler 8.0.30

Use version 8.0 to profile Java 5 applications only. To profile Java 6 and Java 7 applications, use version 9.5.

The thing I cannot understand is why do they recommend to profile only Java 5 applications with 8.0? Is there any rationale behind this or just marketing?

Answer 1

At a guess, new APIs were added to Java 6 which allow version 9.5 to work more efficiently or effectively. That would certainly make sense of the message.

EDIT: This is confirmed on the Yourkit 9.0 changes page:

Caveat: only applications running on Java 6 or newer can be profiled. New functionality provided by this version of the profiler requires Java 6 APIs which are not available in earlier Java versions. For profiling Java 5 applications, please use YourKit Java Profiler 8.0.

Answer 2

I have profiled java 6 applications with Yourkit 7.5 and it worked well.

Have seen some small bugs - GC time is not always correct, in CPU profiling sampling mode there are Object.wait methods that are not supposed to consume CPU.