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Java 7 Roundup (Dec 10th)

10 Dec 2007

This is a weekly update on new Java 7 information. All current and previous information is maintained on my Java 7 page.

Several people have announced this, but here is Kelly O’Hair’s announcement that JDK 7 build 24 is out on Mercurial! Build 24 should be functionally identical to build 23, just moved into the Mercurial repositories. If that whets your appetite, you might also take a look at Elliotte Rusty Harold telling you how to build Java 7.

In OpenJDK, there have been several new projects proposed and accepted. The Porters group was proposed and accepted to cover, of course, ports to other OSes. Maybe we’ll see the amazing work being doing as part of SoyLatte come under the OpenJDK as part of that effort. There has also been discussion of a Conformance group in the governance board which decided to wait a couple weeks for discussion before officially proposing it. Given the history of contention around the TCK, should be interesting to watch that one. Finally, and most importantly for this roundup, the Java 7 project has been proposed and will serve as the basis for the Java 7 Mercurial repositories.

Language Proposals

Neal Gafter posted last week on restricted closures. I’m not going to comment because it pretty much went over my head. But maybe you can read it and explain it to me. :)

Continuing the discussion on extension methods, Yardena proposed a more specific syntax for extension methods, which I like a little better than previous proposals. Seems to be more explicit in what is happening and provide some hope to resolve method conflicts.

Of course, the place to be for Java language changes this week is Antwerp for JavaPolis. I suspect we’ll get a lot of info coming out this week which I hopefully will collect and have fresh and ready for you next week!

More info: Closures, Extension Methods

Things were a little light this week, so I’ll close with a couple fun Java 7 related links. First, we have a pictorial essay on the evolution of Java with its culmination in Java 7. And second, we have a web 3.0 song set to Billy Joel’s music with a lyric rewrite about Java 7 (nicely linked).