Developer Break: OpenJDK 8, Lift, Wildfly and a C++ REST

Catch up on the smaller but important notes for developers, from libraries to APIs and from people to posts. In this edition: OpenJDK 8 milestones, Lift refreshed, alpha Wildfly, C++ REST SDKs, JazzHub betas and SMS reception.

Java and the JVM

• Mark Reinhold has pointed out that, in contrast to previous plans and some reports, the seventh milestone of JDK 8 is "not quite feature complete", although the features that affect Project Lambda have been delivered in the latest milestone release. Of the three features missing – limited doPrivleged, concurrency updates and hash collision handling in balanced hashmaps – two are already out for review and one is being worked on.

• Version 2.5 of the Lift Scala web framework is now available. Lift, which has slightly fallen behind the Play framework, is used in sites such as the Guardian and Foursquare.

• A first alpha of the next major release of Wildfly, formerly known as the JBoss open source application server, is now available; among other things, this major release is scheduled to implement the new Java EE 7.

Windows

• Microsoft's C++ REST SDK, currently described as "Project Casablanca", has completed its beta phase, and version 1.0.0 is now available to download from CodePlex. Alternatively, the SDK that allows software developers to access the Windows Azure cloud platform via C++ can also be installed using Visual Studio's NuGet package manager.

Services

• At Innovate 2013, IBM presented another beta version of the JazzHub cloud environment for planning, developing and analysing software; the beta is currently only available to "Early Access" users.

• The developers behind German Telekom's Developer Garden developer network have extended the Global SMS API to include a "Receive SMS" feature that allows SMS text messages to be received directly within applications.

(djwm)