With JavaOne [1] 2013 less than two weeks away, it's not surprising that there have been some announcements in recent days regarding JDK 8 [2]. In this post, I briefly look at these JDK 8 [3] announcements.
In his blog There’s not a moment to lose! [4], Oracle's Chief Architect of
the Java Platform Group Mark Reinhold [5] recently posted about the JDK 8 Developer Preview [6]. According to Reinhold, the Developer Preview [7] milestone "is intended for broad testing by developers." Reinhold then goes on to highlight that "the principal feature of this release is Project Lambda [8] (JSR 335 [9])" and he describes in one paragraph the impact of lambda expressions on the language. Reinhold specifically mentions some of the "many other new features [10]" of JDK 8 such as the new Date/Time API [11], Nashorn JavaScript engine [12], and the removal of HotSpot JVM permanent generation [13].
On the same day that Reinhold posted "JDK 8 Developer Preview" on his blog (9 September 2013), The Java Tutorials' Weblog [14] featured a new post called "JDK 8 Documentation - Developer Preview Release [15]" and the post "Java Tutorial JDK 8 Early Access Updates [16]" appeared on the same weblog the next day. The latter post states that "new JDK 8 early access documentation" was included with the "updated Java Tutorial" that was part of the "release of JDK 7u40." The post summarizes two major additions to the tutorials: new Data-Time API Trail [17] and bulk data operations lesson [18].
The JDK 8 Documentation - Developer Preview Release [15] post highlights the "Java Development Kit Release 8 (JDK 8) Early Access Documentation," which it describes as consisting of Developer Guides [19], The Java Tutorials [20], and API documentation [2]. Several categories of JDK 8 documentation are described with links to the described documentation: language and library enhancements [21], security enhancements [22], tool enhancements [23], internationalization enhancements [24], platform and system enhancements [25], removed features [26], and more documentation to expect [27].
Besides the JDK 8 news mentioned in this post, other pre-JavaOne news in recent days has included mention in Java Mission Control (Finally) Released! [28] of Java Mission Control [29] being converged into HotSpot JVM from JRockit as of Java 7u40 [30] (part of Oracle Java SE Advanced [31]). The post Using the Java Discovery Protocol [32] was posted today. It is important to note [33] that, as the Java 7 Update 40 Release Notes state [34], although "JDK 7u40 includes the first release of Java Mission Control (JMC) that is bundled with the Hotspot JVM," "Java Mission Control [35] (JMC) is a commercial feature available for java users with a commercial License." This is in line with what was discussed at JavaOne 2012 [36].