J2SE 5.0 (Tiger) is out!

J2SE 5.0 (Tiger) is out!

The J2SE 5.0 final bits are now available at http://java.sun.com/j2se/5.0/download.jsp

And there is a variety of news about the release on java.sun.com.

The JCP Executive Committee approved the last 12 Tiger JSRs on September 14th. Less formally, but just as importantly, we then received our official blessing from the J2SE Quality Assurance team that we meet all the release criteria and are ready to go. Yesterday we did the final round of formal release approvals inside of Sun, including things like getting formal approval from the product support team that they believe the product is ready to ship and they are ready to support it.

Overall release quality is looking extremely good. The QA team runs some heavy-duty stress tests, where the "pass" criteria is that the systems stay up for a certain number of days. Well, at this point all those tests systems have been running for five weeks and they look like staying up until we decide to pull the power cord. Happiness!

Tiger has been a big release and it is great to see it ship. There have been hundreds of contributors, from across the world, and across the industry. Many many thanks to everyone who has contributed, either through helping to develop the new APIs in the JCP, or through contributing to the implementation, or through helping to test and stabilize the release. It has been a big effort but it has been well worth it.

Now on to Mustang and Dolphin! For details on the release plans for J2SE post-tiger take a look at Mark Reinhold's blog on the New Release Model.

                                                  - Graham