Re-thinking JDK 7

[David Herron]

On Wed, Sep 8, 2010 at 9:21 AM, <mark.reinhold at oracle.com> wrote:

> ...
> So, whither JDK 7?
> ...
> To summarize:
>
>  Plan A:  JDK 7 (as currently defined)                      Mid 2012
>
>  Plan B:  JDK 7 (minus Lambda, Jigsaw, and part of Coin)    Mid 2011
>           JDK 8 (Lambda, Jigsaw, the rest of Coin, ++)     Late 2012
>
> (As always, our intent is that JDK 7 will ship concurrently with a Java
>  SE 7 JSR, and likewise for JDK 8 and Java SE 8, and also that there
>  will be JSRs for Lambda and Coin.)
>
> Here at Oracle we're leaning heavily toward the lower-risk Plan B.  The
> platform has been idle for (more than!) long enough -- it's time to get
> Java moving again.  If there are good reasons to prefer Plan A, however,
> then I'd like to hear them.
>
> - Mark
>
>
> [1] http://openjdk.java.net/projects/jdk7/milestones/


Hi Mark, this is a very pragmatic proposal which makes a lot of sense.  It's
a great idea.  It's been a heck of a long time since JDK6 went out, etc.

+1

However there's an unmentioned pink elephant in the room whose presence will
be known if not here but in the blogosphere.  Namely, getting JCP approval
for this and a Java 7 umbrella JSR.

I know from my past work that the umbrella JSR and JCP approval was required
in order to call it 'Java n' (for all previous values of n).  You did use
the phrase 'JDK n' rather than 'Java n' which might or might not have
significance.  Namely JDK is the name of Su..er..Oracle's product which
implements the Java platform.

+ David Herron
http://davidherron.com