Eclipse 3.7.1 supports Java 7

The Eclipse Foundation has issued the first service release to version 3.7 of its development environment. The most noticeable change in Eclipse 3.7.1 is the addition of support for Java 7. When the developers released version 3.7 of Eclipse at the end of June as part of the official Indigo release train, the final version of Java 7 wasn't available. Shortly after Oracle released the new version of Java – long awaited by the Java community – on 28 July, the Eclipse developers announced their support of the new version. To implement this support, the organisation released a "Feature Pack".

Service releases typically don't include new features, they usually only contain bug fixes. Major releases are normally issued in June and, for years, the developers have released two service versions for each of these: the first in September, and the second one in February the following year. At the same time, they are working on the next version of the development environment, code-named Eclipse Juno.

The recently released second milestone of Eclipse Juno is the first to use Eclipse 4.2, which is the name under which the Eclipse community has been developing a "new generation" IDE for several years. Eclipse Juno has supported Java 7 functions since the beginning of August. These functions are detailed on the "What's new for Java 7" web page.

(crve)