JDK 7 gets a timetable

According to the roadmap published on the OpenJDK web site, JDK 7, the Java Development Kit for Java 7, is expected to arrive at the start of 2010. The schedule calls for another 6 milestone releases as 2009 progresses, with the next milestone, M3, arriving just before JavaOne. M3 is scheduled to include JSR 292's VM Support for non-Java languages, support for SCTP (Stream Control Transmission Protocol) and SDP (Sockets Direct Protocol) on Solaris, an upgrade to Unicode 5.1 and an updated class loader.

Those enhancements will join the features from the previous two milestones, which included compressed 64 bit object pointers to make memory access more efficient, the G1 Garbage First Garbage collector and JSR 203's NIO.2.

Future milestone versions will then see features from Java 6u10 ported, along with new platform APIs and the inclusion of an updated XML stack, Elliptic-curve cryptography, JSR 296's Swing Application Framework and Project Coin's small language enhancements. A full list of the approved features for JDK7 is also available.

Although the roadmap points to early 2010 for the arrival of JDK7, Mark Reinhold, principal engineer at Sun who works on Java SE and OpenJDK, points out that JDK 7 is not defining what will be in Java SE 7, the standard edition run time, and that the development process is about creating a prototype for a future proposal for the Jave SE 7 Platform Specification, to go into the Java Community Process.

(djwm)