Just in time for the holidays!

The Early Draft Review version of the JSR 270 specification, which governs the content of the Java SE 6 “Mustang” release, is now available.

JSR 270 is an “Umbrella” JSR, so it doesn’t define specific features itself—instead it lists features defined in other JSRs, or in the concurrent maintenance review of the Java SE platform specification. As an improvement over past umbrella specifications, this time around we’ve augmented each feature description with non-normative links to the relevant draft Mustang javadoc as well as any associated JSRs or other material.

When reviewing this draft please keep in mind that the Umbrella JSR only covers the component JSRs and other big-ticket or highly-visible items in Mustang. Most smaller enhancements aren’t listed in the Umbrella JSR, though of course they will be covered in the maintenance review of the platform specification that’ll start around the time that the beta release of the reference implementation ships.

Mustang is still under development. The JSR 270 Expert Group has approved all of the features listed in the draft, and we expect to see all those features in the final release. It’s still possible, however, for a feature to be dropped if, for example, it turns out to be too difficult to implement. It’s also possible for new features to be added, given sufficient justification, though at this stage big changes to the overall shape of the release are pretty unlikely.

Comments on this draft are most welcome! The formal EDR period ends in sixty days, but you can send feedback to the e-mail address listed in the draft at any time.

Sneak Preview

Here’s a summary of the approved feature list sorted by area, component, and feature name. For more details please see the EDR specification.

You can check out the initial implementations of many—though not all—of these new features in the weekly snapshot builds of the reference implementation.