FFM goes final!

[Chris Hegarty]

Congrats! This is truly awesome. Looking forward to Java 22 already. :-)

-Chris.

On 20/10/2023 12:16, Maurizio Cimadamore wrote:
> Hi,
> As some of you might know, JEP 454 has landed in the JDK repository 
> and the FFM API is no longer a preview API :-)
>
> A binary snapshot containing the Java 22 changes is available here:
>
> https://jdk.java.net/22/
>
> And, a jextract branch to go with it is also available here:
>
> https://github.com/openjdk/jextract/tree/jdk22
>
> Over the last few months the focus has been on further polishing the 
> rough edges of the API. We have just published a PR [1] which enhances 
> the "critical" linker option so that heap segments can be passed 
> directly to native code (w/o copy). We believe this further 
> enhancement should bring some benefits for legacy APIs that are 
> "stuck" dealing with byte arrays, but need to interop with native code.
>
> We have also been working on the tooling aspect of restricted methods, 
> adding support for restricted method warnings in javac [2] and also 
> adding better javadoc support for restricted methods [3].
>
> It is also nice to see the first attempts at using FFM within the JDK 
> itself [4], we hope this trend is one that will continue.
>
> Of course, finalizing the API doesn't mean we're done (is there ever 
> such a thing?). We are actively exploring ways to model foreign data 
> with records, and we plan to make more progress on improving the 
> startup of FFM clients. More longer term, there's a lot of interesting 
> synergies to look forward to, from structured arenas (Loom) to better 
> support for unsigned types (Valhalla). Plenty of exciting stuff to 
> work on still!
>
> We'd also like to take a moment to thank all of you. It is a privilege 
> to be in a position to improve the Java platform, and one that we do 
> not take lightly. But, without your help, all our efforts will be in 
> vain. So we're very grateful for the feedback you have provided along 
> the way, in every shape or form, be it a bug report, a benchmark or 
> even just a "git checkout" to see what's up. You are the pulsating 
> heart of what we call Java. Please keep it up, and keep helping us 
> making Java a better language/platform.
>
> Cheers
> Maurizio
>
> [1] - https://git.openjdk.org/jdk/pull/16201
> [2] - https://git.openjdk.org/jdk/pull/15964
> [3] - https://github.com/openjdk/jdk/pull/16188
> [4] - https://git.openjdk.org/jdk/pull/15476
>
>