The JCP Expert Group in charge of JSR 107, the specification for the Java Temporary Caching API, better known as JCache, recently submitted the maintenance review for JCache 1.1.1. This is just an errata release and not particularly newsworthy, but it marks something of a milestone for the longest running spec request in the history of Java. And it seemed like a good time to talk with its co-author.
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Posted by John K. Waters on February 13, 20190 comments
The Apache Software Foundation's (ASF) release of NetBeans 10.0 (incubating) at the end of December launched the venerable Java (now polyglot) IDE into 2019 with a slew of enhancements, including support for JDK 11, the addition of a JUnit 5 library and new PHP features.
The list of JDK 11 enhancements in this release includes:
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Posted by John K. Waters on February 12, 20190 comments
The Eclipse Foundation yesterday announced the release of GlassFish 5.1, considered a major milestone release belying the modest increase in its version number. GlassFish 5.1 comprises the full migration of GlassFish and associated Technology Compatibility Kit (TCK) code to Foundation stewardship.
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Posted by John K. Waters on January 30, 20190 comments
Alphabet's Google subsidiary has petitioned the Supreme Court to review its long-running copyright dispute and re-evaluate a Federal Circuit court's decision that copyright protections extend to software interfaces, and whether, as a jury found, "petitioner's use of a software interface in the context of creating a new computer program constitutes fair use."
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Posted by John K. Waters on January 29, 20190 comments
2018 was a year of big changes for the Java community, among which none were bigger than the transition of the stewardship of enterprise Java from Oracle and the Java Community Process (JCP) to the Eclipse Foundation. But that Herculean task wasn't the only Java-related challenge faced by that organization last year. I talked with Mike Milinkovich, who has served as executive director of the foundation for all its 14+ years, about these and other changes, and what he sees coming for the Java community in 2019.
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Posted by John K. Waters on January 14, 20190 comments
As Chair of the Java Community Process (JCP), the technology standards and specifications organization behind the evolution of the Java language and platform, Heather VanCura has a lot on her plate. She leads the activities of the JCP Program Office, manages the organization's membership, guides spec leads and experts through the process, leads the Executive Committee (EC) meetings and manages the JCP.org Web site. She's also responsible for the Adopt-a-JSR program, organizing hack days and other events, and promoting the overall growth of the membership. She also blogs, tweets and travels the world on behalf of the ever-expanding Java ecosystem.
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Posted by John K. Waters on January 7, 20190 comments
The past year saw another surge in the evolution of Java, thanks to myriad changes that will have long-term impacts on the Java developer community -- everything from the Eclipse Foundation's decision to accept stewardship of enterprise Java and rename it Eclipse Jakarta to IBM's acquisition of Red Hat, the release of JDK 11 to the appeals court ruling against Google in its long-running battle with Oracle over Java copyrights, the latter company's implementation of its faster Java release cadence to its decision to roll up the venerable JavaOne conference (already whittled down to a subset of Oracle OpenWorld) into a new event with sessions and keynotes covering an expanded menu of languages, frameworks, tools and tech called Oracle Code One.
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Posted by John K. Waters on January 3, 20190 comments
Java developers can now run Gradle builds with JDK 11. The latest milestone release of the popular open source build automation tool (Gradle 5.0) also comes with a production-ready Kotlin DSL, dependency version alignment, and task timeouts, among a long list enhancements and upgrades.
The true headline grabber in this release is the inclusion of Kotlin DSL 1.0. The Kotlin DSL (domain-specific language) provides an alternative syntax to the traditional Groovy DSL (originally introduced in the earliest versions of Gradle) through an "enhanced editing experience" in supported IDEs (according to the Gradle Kotlin DSL Primer). The Kotlin DSL is currently fully supported by two IDEs: IntelliJ IDEA and Android Studio, but other integrated development environments can import and work with Kotlin-DSL-based builds.
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Posted by John K. Waters on November 28, 20180 comments
The recent announcement that Amazon Web Services (AWS) will be providing Java developers with a no-cost, fully supported OpenJDK distribution came as welcome news in the face of Oracle's decision to end free long-term support for OpenJDK after January 2019. Dubbed Amazon Corretto, the new dev kit comes with long-term support that Amazon says will include performance enhancements and security fixes.
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Posted by John K. Waters on November 26, 20180 comments