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TOP THREE LINKS YOU MUST CLICK ON Mastering Mustang: JDK 6.0 Mustang Release
A review of some of the latest happenings in the JDK 6.0 (Mustang) release
By: Calvin Austin
Jul. 20, 2005 05:00 AM
This month I wanted to review some of the latest happenings in the JDK 6.0 (Mustang) release. Although we have to wait to see the initial JSR draft, you can download the binaries the engineers are actually working on. Some of the newest features to be added include JSR 223 scripting support and JAX-WS 2.0.
Getting the JDK 6.0 Download First impressions with the Linux release are good. Startup performance seems to be in the same ballpark and the demos I tried worked. Although it's getting harder to find Web sites that use Java applets, there are some still to be found on http://java.com.
What Is in the Release So Far? I mentioned the addition of JSR 223 earlier. At the moment the changes are at the API level only; there are no examples or shell interface. The scripting API is exposed as javax.script and a Rhino script implementation (Rhino is an open source JavaScript written in Java) as com.sun.script.javascript and sun.org.mozilla. The quickest way to get started with what the technology has to offer is to head over to www.mozilla.org/rhino/doc.html. The example RunScript launcher script can be easily modified to import the sun.org.mozilla classes instead of org.mozilla. In addition, you need to catch a sun JavaScript exception. The RunScript launcher allows you to supply JavaScript as a command-line option to the JVM. Once the API has been made official, the normal method would be to use the new javax script engine hooks. An example of using RunScript with JDK 6.0: java RunScript 'java.lang.System.getProperty("java.version")' 1.6.0-ea Another neat feature is an incremental improvement to the Java IO API. I mentioned in an earlier article that the NIO JSR changes have slipped the release. However, you can now see how much disk space is available without having to resort to a JNI call. The following code snippet reports 1K blocks of space on directory /export.
File f =new File("/export");
Client Java Changes One very simple feature I was able to test out was the splash screen API and splash screen launcher. You can try it out too. The following example was run from the demo/jfc/Stylepad directory: java -splash:src/resources/rabbit.gif -jar Stylepad.jar You'll then see the rabbit image appear as a splash screen. Many of the other client features are purely API driven, including the desktop integration. This is probably sufficient for ISV/tools developers; however, it may take a while to see serious adoption by the majority of developers.
Vote Away The Sun JDK product has a long integration cycle, meaning that getting approval to integrate bugs even up to a year before the release gets increasingly difficult. Unless a bug is a true showstopper, don't expect a fix if the release date is within three months (a cycle of testing takes over a month). In conclusion, the JDK 6.0 release can certainly be taken out for a test download today. Hopefully the line on startup time and quality can be maintained until we see the final release. LATEST JAVA STORIES & POSTS
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