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Sun offers up draft of Java SE 6 specs for comments

The early draft of Sun's JSR 270 specification, which governs the content of the Java SE 6 Mustang release, is now available, says Sun's chief Java2 engineer, Mark Reinhold in a recent blog post. J2SE 6.0, code-named Mustang, is due for release in mid-2006.

"JSR 270 is an 'Umbrella' JSR, so it doesn't define specific features itself. Instead it lists features defined in other JSRs, or in the concurrent maintenance review of the Java SE platform specification," Reinhold writes. "As an improvement over past umbrella specifications, this time around we've augmented each feature description with non-normative links to the relevant draft Mustang javadoc as well as any associated JSRs or other material."

Mustang is still under development, Reinhold continues. "The JSR 270 Expert Group has approved all of the features listed in the draft, and we expect to see all those features in the final release. It's still possible, however, for a feature to be dropped if, for example, it turns out to be too difficult to implement. It's also possible for new features to be added, given sufficient justification, though at this stage, big changes to the overall shape of the release are pretty unlikely."

The formal period to comment on the draft ends in less than two months, but you can send feedback to the email address listed in the draft at any time, Reinhold concludes.