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Download J2SE 6.0

Posted by daniel on November 16, 2004 at 10:57 AM EST

No, really, we mean it.

The brand new java.net "Mustang" Snapshot Releases are perfect for you. These snapshots give developers access to the latest features and fixes made to the J2SE 6.0 release. Whether you choose to download the binaries or the source code, be aware that these early releases are only lightly tested before being made available so if you are risk averse or inexperienced, these snapshot releases should be avoided. If you live for adventure, join us on the cutting edge.

The Mustang snapshot news leads off today's Weblogs. Mark Reinhold explains that this is Another experiment in openness. Building on the success of releasing the Tiger Snapshots, they will be releasing Mustang starting with build twelve. In addition "For the first time ever we're shipping source bundles for a J2SE release while it's under active development (gulp). This should make it easier for interested developers to contribute to the release as it evolves." The hope is that soon there will be "a streamlined process for patch submission so that you can send code directly to real live JDK engineers rather than paste it into a bug report, cross your fingers, and hope for the best."

This is a big deal. I'm sure you can say "but why didn't you ..." or "it's not ..." but, in my opinion, this is a huge step. Mark also asks for you to submit ideas on how the process can be improved. Finally, anticipating some obvious feedback, Mark notes that "The source bundles are covered by the Java Research License. The JRL is, to my non-lawyerly brain, a big improvement over the old SCSL license -- for one thing, I can understand it! The JRL also gives developers and researchers more flexibility than SCSL did, though it's still not an actual open source license in OSI terms (sorry)."

In other blog postings, Kathy Walrath posts that after ten years of working on the Java Tutorial, she is joining engineering. "What's that have to do with me," you ask. Aha - she replies Want to Write for a Living? Someone needs to replace her in her former role.

Eitan Suez takes a look at Java Development on MacOSX Pretty "Swell" to Me. He looks at the tools he needs and uses and discusses the Mac OS X support for his programming needs.

In Also in Java Today , one of the nice things about Design Patterns is that the good ones solve problems that occur in more than one setting. In Christopher Diggins blog entry Inheriting from Template Parameters: A New Pattern? he writes that he uses the pattern to "define contract classes, which verify the contractual obligations of another class [or] to define extension classes which introduce operators and helper functions". In the talkback, readers point out that this pattern does exist and they provide a link to the wiki entry on the Curiously Recurring Template Pattern" (CRTP) first described by James Coplien in the C++ Report, Feb. 1995.

The Tiger release includes a new Queue interface which John Zukowski describes in the Core Java Tech Tip Queues and delayed processing. He explains that "instead of adding an element to the queue with the Collection.add method, you offer it to the queue with the offer method. Why the difference? An add operation can fail -- one example is if a queue is bounded in size (using the bank line analogy, there can't be more than 10 people waiting.) With the add method of Collection, add fails by throwing an exception. By comparison, the offer method "fails" by returning false. So by using the offer method, you can save exception handling for truly exceptional cases (especially since the exception thrown is an unchecked runtime exception)."

In today's Forums, Keelsup "would like to have an api to search for resources on the classpath. For instance in my application I would like to load all plugins. Plugins are class-files that could be loaded with the following regular expression 'plugins/*'."

Spetrucci writes "Log4J could still be adapted to integrate (and optionnally replace) tranparently the default logger implementation. Of couse, this would require the agreement/help from the Log4J owners.

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No, really, we mean it.
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