Yesterday we posted the first Maintenance Review for the Mustang (Java SE 6) release.

This review describes the details of all the changes and additions made to the Java SE platform specification in Mustang that aren’t themselves specified by their own JSRs. Small enhancements such as the new java.awt.Desktop class, e.g., are specified in this maintenance review, whereas a big new feature like the compiler API is specified by its own JSR, 199.

The maintenance review also contains countless small corrections to the platform specification. The bulk of these are summarized in a set of API difference pages which show the changes made between Tiger and Mustang.

This is just the first Mustang maintenance review, reflecting the content of the first beta release. There’ll be another MR around the time of the second beta release, and a final MR for the release candidate. The second and third MRs are expected to be much smaller than the first.

The past is prologue

How is it that we’re doing a maintenance review for Mustang when Mustang hasn’t even been finished yet?

Good question! In fact technically this is a JCP Maintenance Review of the Tiger (J2SE 5.0) specification, JSR 176. This is just an artifact of the way that the Java Community Process works. The smaller, non-JSR changes and additions in the Tiger release, likewise, were covered in maintenance reviews of the Merlin (J2SE 1.4) specification, JSR 59.

Comments welcome!

The formal MR-1 period ends in thirty days, but you can send feedback to the e-mail address listed in the review materials at any time.