Oracle has released JDK Mission Control (JMC) 9, an update to the tool kit for monitoring, managing, profiling, and troubleshooting Java applications that adds a dark theme and makes the frequency of JVM checks configurable. The most significant change is that JMC now must use JDK 17 or later to run. JMC 9 was unveiled on April 21. Binaries can be downloaded from oracle.com. While JMC 9 requires JDK 17 or later, it still can read Java Flight Recorder (JFR) recordings from JDK 7u40 or later. JMC and the JFR profiling and event collection framework together offer a tool chain to collect runtime ..read more

The readability, maintainability, and usability of switch statements and expressions in Java would be improved by a proposal to allow exceptions to be handled in the switch block. The current OpenJDK proposal, “Exception handling in switch (Preview),” would be part of the Standard Edition of Java, although no specific version Java SE has been designated yet as the recipient. Specifically, the proposal calls for enhancing switch so that exceptions thrown by the selector (the e in switch (e) …) can be handled in the switch block. Goals of the plan, which was created January 12 and updated April ..read more

Java would be enhanced with the ability to succinctly import all packages exported by a module, under a proposal floating in the Java community. The plan would simplify the use of modular libraries in Java. The preview language feature for Java SE (Standard Edition), called Module Import Declarations, has been filed as a JDK Enhancement Proposal (JEP) in the OpenJDK community. Goals of the plan include simplifying the reuse of modular libraries by allowing entire modules to be imported at once, avoiding the noise of multiple type-import-on-demand declarations when using diverse parts of the AP ..read more

Java services are the most-impacted by third-party vulnerabilities, according to the “State of DevSecOps 2024” report just released by cloud security provider Datadog. Released on April 17, the report found that 90% of Java services were susceptible to one or more critical or high-severity vulnerabilities introduced by a third-party library. The average for other languages was 47%. Datadog’s report analyzed tens of thousands of applications and container images and thousands of cloud environments to assess application security. Following Java in the vulnerabilities assessment were JavaScript ..read more

A change to Java’s G1 garbage collector would lower the memory and processing overhead and speed the execution of Java’s C2 optimizing JIT (just-in-time) compiler, benefiting cloud deployments, under a proposal in the Java community. The OpenJDK proposal would simplify the implementation of G1’s barriers, which record information about application memory accesses, by shifting their expansion from early in the C2 JIT's compilation pipeline to later, the proposal states. Underlying this proposal is the increasing popularity of cloud-based Java deployments, which has led to a stronger focus on re ..read more

JetBrains has added full-line code autocompletion to its family of IDEs (integrated development environments), powered by locally run AI models. Full line code complеtion is available for Java, Kotlin, Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, CSS, PHP, Go, and Ruby with the 2024.1 versions of the respective IDEs. To read this article in full, please click here ..read more

Java Development Kit (JDK) 23, the next planned version of standard Java, is off and running, with two features now scheduled for the release. Due September 19, JDK 23 has just added a second preview of a class-file API, providing a standard API for parsing, generating, and transforming Java class files. This feature was previously previewed in JDK 22, which was released on March 19. Previously slotted for JDK 23 was a preview of primitive types in patterns, instanceof, and switch. To read this article in full, please click here ..read more

JetBrains’ IntelliJ IDEA 2024.1, a release of the integrated development environment (IDE) due on April 4, will feature an optional K2 compiler mode, enabling developers to use K2 for faster and more robust Kotlin code analysis, the company said. With this planned release, the IDE for Kotlin and Java will have two modes. The class mode, enabled by default, will use the standard K1 Kotlin compiler to analyze Kotlin code. The K2 mode will use the new K2 compiler as its code analysis engine. The K2 mode now is in an alpha state. The company made the announcement in a March 25 blog post. To read t ..read more

With atomic clock-like regularity, the latest version of Java, JDK 22, was released last week. Although this is not a long-term support (LTS) release, there is nothing to stop you from using it in production, and it contains some interesting new features. Let’s dive in and see what this brings us. New features for the Java platform are defined through JDK Enhancement Proposals (JEPs), and JDK 22 contains 12 of these. Coincidentally, over the last 13 Java releases, since the switch to a six-month cadence, the average number of JEPs (to the nearest integer) is also 12. You could, therefore, desc ..read more

Oracle has released GraalVM for JDK 22, an update to the Java runtime with ahead-of-time (AOT) compilation that brings support for Java 22 features. Released on the same day as Java 22, which was published March 19, GraalVM for JDK 22 can be downloaded from the project website. Most features of JDK 22 are available for Graal JIT compilation and Native Image AOT compilation. Java 22 features supported in both Graal JIT and Native Image include string templates, the class-file API, unnamed variables and patterns, structured concurrency, and scoped values. To read this article in full, please cli ..read more