JDK 21 Forked From Mainline For What Will Be The Next Java LTS Release

[phoronix]

Phoronix: JDK 21 Forked From Mainline For What Will Be The Next Java LTS Release

Today marks the ramp-down phase one point for JDK 21 where the OpenJDK code is forked from mainline for this de facto Java 21 implementation. Making OpenJDK 21 all the more exciting is this is going to be one of Oracle's bi-annual Long-Term Support (LTS) releases...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/JDK-21-Forked-From-Mainline

[muncrief]

I refuse to use OpenJDK!

I want ClosedJDK, and everything to be secret like Apple and Microsoft do it

"When everything is secret, everything is legal."
SearingTruth

[caligula]

Most enterprise users are still stuck with JDK 6, 7, or 8.

[qarium]

who in their sane right mind would ever cooperate with Oracle ??? Oracle is a nasty and criminal corporation.

[SofS]

Speaking of JDK, any news why LibreOffice still depends on it? One of their original goals was to get rid of java, was it not?

Maybe this had something to do with RedHat's decision to rely only on flatpack for it. On my computer that uses Fedora it still depends on java-17-openjdk-headless-1:17.0.7.0.7-5.fc38.x86_64

[bug77]

Most enterprise users are still stuck with JDK 6, 7, or 8.

Neah. There's still an installed base for Java8, but many have moved on. They've only moved on to Java11, because by Java17, internal classes aren't accessible anymore and many dependencies will break*. We use 17 and I hope we will be able to switch to 21 by the end of the year. Waiting to see how it goes.

Not mentioned in the article, Java21 should also land some improved pattern matching in switch statements. That's useful for example when you want to dispatch some records/events by peeking inside.

*Because old dependencies are holding it back, the bigger the software, the greater the chance it won't compile on Java17. But just because there's a number of monstrosities out there that can't move, doesn't mean the majority can't.

[bug77]

Speaking of JDK, any news why LibreOffice still depends on it? One of their original goals was to get rid of java, was it not?

Maybe this had something to do with RedHat's decision to rely only on flatpack for it. On my computer that uses Fedora it still depends on java-17-openjdk-headless-1:17.0.7.0.7-5.fc38.x86_64

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/LibreOffice

Check the optional dependencies pacman displays. If you use HSQLDB Embedded in LibreOffice Base, you must install a Java Runtime Environment. You may need hsqldb2-java^AUR to use some modules in LibreOffice Base.

This tool that just released, Google, is wonderful

[rclark]

Wonder how much Java is actually used anymore. I know we abandoned it when Applets were no longer accepted by our customers security IT departments.... I really liked that idea of applets at the time as I saw the potential there. My current company uses C#, VB, C++, JavaScript for most of their work. In my department we use lots of Python, C, C++. There are a couple of our vendors products that use Java Helper apps. That's about it.

[andyprough]

Wonder how much Java is actually used anymore.

I use one java program called DocFetcher, for searching through the text of a pile of assorted documents and spreadsheets for key words. It's been around on GNU/Linux for quite a few years, and is pretty zippy these days.

[browseria]

Not mentioned in the article, Java21 should also land some improved pattern matching in switch statements. That's useful for example when you want to dispatch some records/events by peeking inside.

My favorite new feature (also not mentioned in the article) is Sequenced Collections (JEP 431), which doesn't really sound like much until you realize they refactored the entire Collections and Map hierarchy to support the new functionality; now _every_ collection/map class has add/get/removeFirst/Last() functions, even if they don't contain sequenced data. I anticipate this will help cut down on off-by-one bugs trying to implement the same yourself.
image.png
And, of course, Virtual Threads/Project Loom is finally production ready in Java 21 LTS.