Java SE 6 Released

twofish writes "Sun has announced the availability of Java Standard Edition 6 final release. JSE6 now has dynamic language support. It comes pre-delivered with Netscape's Rhino, a Javascript engine, and the scripting project's home page documents many other available scripting languages, including awk, Jelly, Pnuts, Python, Ruby, and Scheme. In addition a lot of work has been done on the libraries and run-time compiler. The JIT has been improved, with better runtime analysis of program characteristics, giving notable performance improvements. Other improvements include better desktop support, improvements in Swing look and feel, Windows Vista support, and better diagnostic support (For example, profilers and debuggers can now attach to a running JVM without specifically using a debugging-capable configuration. For example, if a problem is found at run-time for a production server, a debugger can attach to it without restarting the server). Sun is also offering sixty days of free developer support for JSE 6 through their Developer Services program."

Bogus Link in website

[Fujisawa Sensei]

From Sun's Website:

Java SE 6 is the current major release of the Java SE platform, with full support from NetBeans IDE 5.5. Sun endeavors to foster the highest level of transparency and collaboration on the platform with the Java community through Project JDK 6, resulting in the following key features. Sun's Java Multi-Platform Support, Training, and Certification can provide you the peace of mind to develop and deploy Java solutions with confidence.

Download the Java SE 6 Release Candidate

Sun says in one place its current, but links a Release Candidate in the early access site. But if you go to the J2SE Download page: http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp/ [sun.com] There is a link to Java 6.

New features with specification references

[nyri]

The real specification of new features is available at JSR 270 [jcp.org].

The scripting support is specified at JSR 223 [jcp.org].

Here are some additional new features:

• New database connection API, JDBC 4.0: JSR 221 [jcp.org]
• New version of web services API, JAX-WS 2.0: JSR 224 [jcp.org]

BTW, why isn't this on the front page? All the fussing about the possible new license was there but not the product publishment itself.

Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations to all the hard working people at Sun, and those outside who contributed (I'm one of them).

I tend to get +5 for these kind of posts, so this time I'll post anonymously to prevent karma wh:

As usual, InfoQ [infoq.com] has a nice writeup with good links.
Sun has a confusing number of portal sites for news and communities, but the two most lively ones are probably java.net [java.net] and Planet JDK [planetjdk.org].

Remember that Java 6 is not GPL, the decision to go GPL came too late in the development phase, only JDK7 is GPL. But you can get JDK6 and JDK7 is under the Research Licence from Subversion, a good blog with info about how and where is here [java.net].

Re:still waiting

[Golthar]

OpenJDK project [java.net]
Hotspot [java.net]

Early 2007 we should see the class libs as well

Re:GPL?

[Golthar]

See also here [sun.com]

"Q:
When will you finish open sourcing the JDK? What is the timeline?
A:
We expect to release a fully buildable JDK based almost completely on open-sourced code in the first half of 2007"

Re:Ask Slashdot...

[Golthar]

Some help on getting you back in the saddle with the new features:

1.5 features in a nutshell [sun.com]

Re:Ask Slashdot...

[LarsWestergren]

What's the best way to get back into using Java? I took a couple of programming classes when it was still Java 1.3/1.4 a few years ago and totally missed the jump to Java 5/6.

I actually enjoyed the Head First Java [oreilly.com] book from O'Reilly, though I'll probably get mocked for it here.... I admit, it can feel a bit "kiddie" to have a lot of pictures, do puzzles and so on, but involving the right half of your brain makes stuff stick better, and for me, makes it fun and fast to learn. Second edition has some Java5 stuff in it.

If that style of learning is not for you, or if you are too advanced for that level, the Java Tutorial [sun.com] was pretty recently updated with new trails for Java 5 and Java 6, so you should find an appropriate level for you quickly. Also Java 5 Developer's Notebook [oreilly.com] is a neat guide.

Re:Downloads page still stupid

[Sircus]

www.java.com [java.com] -> first link you read, "Download now". Two clicks, no NetBeans. java.sun.com is for developers, it's reasonable that they angle it towards them.

No longer Java TWO SE

[gumpish]

But if you go to the J2SE Download page: http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp/ [sun.com] There is a link to Java 6.

Please note that it is no longer "J2SE", it's just Java SE. (As per the URL you pasted in your post.)

Sadly the marketroids still insist on calling it Java SE 6 and not Java SE 1.6 (which it is), but at least today we're better off than with Tiger, which was Java 2 SE 5 (aka 1.5)

Re:Is it any faster for client-side apps?

[J.Y.Kelly]

A big problem with this was that their Swing toolkit is goddamn slow

You know, every time a java story appears here this line gets trotted out, but I'm really not sure that it's anywhere near as valid as it once might have been. From what I understand Sun have made a lot of efforts in the last few releases (1.3+) to speed up swing. I've written quite a few java applications in the last couple of years, all swing based, and none of them has caused me to have any concerns over the speed of the GUI toolkit.

Sure swing still has some other issues issues (eg proper native look and feel), but I'm sure that a lot of the complaints people have about the toolkit's speed are either very old prejudices or stem from poor coding within the application rather than from swing itself.

Re:Downloads page still stupid

[MojoRilla]

Except the version of Java on www.java.com is still Java 5 release 9 [java.com]. So it appears Java 6 is only partially released.

Re:Is JBoss compatible with it?

[jonabbey]

I'm sure that it is. Java's backwards compatibility has always been pretty spectacular. They've got millions of lines of unit-test code that they test new releases against, in addition to major applications which get explicit testing. JBoss is about as major an application as you'll find.

Re:Ask Slashdot...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here are lists of some new features in Java 6.

Core features: http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/J2 SE/Desktop/JavaSE6_build39.html [sun.com]
Desktop features: http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/J2 SE/Desktop/javase6/ [sun.com]

Re:Is it any faster for client-side apps?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some guy wrote a SWT-compatible library that used Swing components and it was FASTER then SWT because Swing uses an opengl pipeline so gets more hardware support for rendering. The only reason to use SWT is to get a native interface.

OpenGL rendering

[Laz10]

If you have an OpenGL capable gfx card you should enable the OpenGL rending pipe for your Swing applications with this

java -Dsun.java2d.opengl=true *javaprogram*

It is disabled by default for compatability reasons, but all java programs should really make two launchers so users can choose.

The OpenGL path should be a lot faster now, since it has been refactored to use only a single thread to ship commands to the gfx card, which is the same technique that most 3d games uses.

It should be noticable.

Re:Features?

[aled]

On Sun's web page announcing this exciting new release, there's a link to the list of "new features and enhancements". When I clicked on it, it said "404: not found". I think that sums up Java quite nicely.

Nice (or not so nice) try of trolling FUD but the link works fine [sun.com].

Major speedup for FP-math intensive apps.

[Thorgal]

What I don't see mentioned here is a significant performance improvement that is especially pronounced in FP-math intensive code. Take a look at some of the timings obtained with JatMark [wfmh.org.pl] benchmark - typically it finishes in half the time (results in seconds):

• 206 - Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.4GHz)/DDR2@667Mhz/Linux 2.6.18.3 #5 SMP/Sun JDK 1.6.0-rc-b104
• 223 - Opteron 275 2.2GHz/Linux 2.6.11.12-grsec/Sun JDK 1.6.0-beta-b59g
• 349 - Pentium M 730 (1.6Ghz)/DDR2@400Mhz/Linux 2.6.15-cK1/Sun JDK 1.6.0-beta-b59g
• 401 - Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.4GHz)/DDR2@667Mhz/Linux 2.6.18.3 #5 SMP/Sun JDK 1.5.0_05-b05
• 408 - Opteron 275 2.2GHz/Linux 2.6.11.12-grsec/Sun JDK 1.5.0_01-b08
• 415 - Opteron 250 2.4GHz (dual)/Linux 2.6.8/Sun JDK 1.5.0-b63
• 596 - Pentium M 730 (1.6Ghz)/DDR2@400Mhz/Linux 2.6.15-cK1/Sun JDK 1.5.0_06-b05

Full results table [wfmh.org.pl].

Re:Is it any faster for client-side apps?

[asb]

What you say about double buffering is incorrect. Double buffering means that the components are first drawn into an off screen graphics context (simply put an "image") that is not displayed. After all components have been drawn off screen the result is displayed on the screen in one fast operation. The effect (and the reason why double buffering is used) is that users never see an incompletely drawn display.

The only performance difference to unbuffered drawing comes from increased memory usage and the displaying of that "image". Double buffering does not require any more steps during component drawing than unbuffered display. The useless clearing you talk about can be resolved by setting component opaqueness to correct value.