Re-thinking JDK 7

[Michael Ernst]

> The new features page shows JSR 308 (Type Annotations) as pushed to JDK 8.
>
> What is the reason for this? My understanding is that JSR 308 has basically
> been delivered - and has been incorporated into the main repositories as of
> quite some time ago.

Yes, this is a surprise and disappointment to many people.

I should point out that not all the JSR 308 patches have been incorporated
into the main repositories -- some are still waiting to be incorporated,
and this has delayed other work.

My understanding is that this is a resource issue.  Oracle only has so much
time and so many people, and -- as is their right -- has allocated those
elsewhere.  Let's hope that type annotations can be incorporated into JDK
8.  (If you want that, tell Oracle and your JCP representatives.)

In the meanwhile, you can get a variant of the OpenJDK compiler that
supports type annotations at http://types.cs.washington.edu/jsr308/ .

		    -Mike