This week's Java roundup for October 25th, 2021, features news from OpenJDK, JDK 18, numerous updates on Spring projects, MicroStream 6.0, Quarkus 2.4.0, Hibernate Reactive 1.0, Open Liberty 21.0.0.11, Eclipse Vert.x 4.2.0, Red Hat introduces Cryostat 2.0, GraalVM Native Build Tools 0.9.7.1, Liberica Native Image Kit 21.3 and JDKMon 17.0.7.
OpenJDK
After its review has concluded, JEP 416, Reimplement Core Reflection with Method Handles, has been promoted from Proposed to Target to Targeted status for JDK 18. This JEP proposes to reimplement the java.lang.reflect classes, Method, Constructor<T> and Field, on top of method handles defined in java.lang.invoke. These method handles will now serve as the mechanism for reflection to reduce the cost of maintenance and development of both packages.
JEP 418, Internet-Address Resolution SPI, has been promoted from Candidate to Proposed to Target status for JDK 18. This JEP proposes to define a service-provider interface for host name and address resolution, so that java.net.InetAddress may take advantage of resolvers other than the default built-in OpenJDK resolver. The review for JEP 418 concludes on November 4, 2021.
JDK 18
Build 21 of the JDK 18 early-access builds was made available this past week, featuring updates from Build 20 that include fixes to various issues. More details may be found in the release notes.
The feature set for JDK 18 currently stands as follows:
- JEP 400: UTF-8 by Default
- JEP 408: Simple Web Server
- JEP 413: Code Snippets in Java API Documentation
- JEP 416: Reimplement Core Reflection with Method Handles
- JEP 417: Vector API (Third Incubator)
- JEP 418: Internet-Address Resolution SPI (Proposed to Target)
Developers are encouraged to report bugs via the Java Bug Database.
Spring Framework
It was another busy week over at Spring as the team provided point releases on a number of their projects.
In a recent report, security fixes, contained with the recent release of Spring Boot versions 2.5.6 and 2.4.12, addressed vulnerabilities within Spring Framework (CVE-2021-22096), Spring Data REST (CVE-2021-22047) and Spring AMQP (CVE-2021-22097). A fourth vulnerability, CVE-2021-22044, was addressed with the release of Spring Cloud OpenFeign versions 2.2.10.RELEASE, 3.0.5 and 3.1.0-M4.
Spring Tools 4.12.1 for Eclipse has been released featuring support for JDK 17, early access builds for Eclipse 2021-12 and Apple Silicon Platform (ARM M1). More details may be found in the release notes.
On the road to Spring GraphQL 1.0.0, the third milestone release was made available. This new version introduces the @BatchMapping annotation for improved batching support. Other new features include: improved Querydsl support; a new default resolver for the TypeResolver interface for GraphQL unions and interfaces; and incorporating the Spring Framework DataBinder class for parsing input arguments. More details may be found in the list of issues.
Based on the recent State of Spring 2021 survey, new features for Spring Cloud Kubernetes, added to the third milestone release of Spring Cloud 2021.0.0, include improved support for service discovery and configuration management that address the barrier in which an application is required to provide permissions to the Kubernetes API server. Spring Cloud 2021.0.0-M3 introduces a new discovery server that "uses the Kubernetes API to fetch Kubernetes services and endpoints to provide service information to apps."
MicroStream
MicroStream has released version 6.0 of their framework featuring integration with Helidon, a Spring Boot configuration layer, specialized type handlers for JDK 17 collections created with the List.of() and Set.of() methods, and a new utility, ObjectCopier, to create deep copies of object graphs. InfoQ will follow up with a more detailed news story.
Hibernate
Hibernate has released Hibernate Reactive 1.0.0.Final featuring full integration with Quarkus. First introduced in December 2020, Hibernate Reactive utilizes the Vert.x non-blocking SQL client libraries and supports PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, Db2, SQL Server, and CockroachDB. InfoQ will follow up with a more detailed news story.
Open Liberty
IBM has promoted Open Liberty 21.0.0.11 from its beta release with new features that include: enabling the installation of user features onto the Open Liberty runtime with the FeatureUtility command-line tool; the use of Kubernetes secrets as Open Liberty configuration variables; and a new HTTP access log format option for the ephemeral port (a communications endpoint of a transport layer protocol) of a client.
Quarkus
Red Hat has released Quarkus 2.4.0.Final featuring: a dependency upgrade to Hibernate Reactive 1.0.0.Final; support for a Kafka streams topology with Quarkus DevUI; continuous testing with multi-module projects; and a new quarkus-awt extension for use with the Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT) and Java2D.
Quarkus Tools for IntelliJ 1.8.0 has been made available with support for CodeLens for REST endpoints and enhancements with the MicroProfile Fault Tolerance and Metrics specifications.
Eclipse Vert.x
Eclipse Vert.x 4.2.0 has been released with support for JDK 17 along with enhancements to their reactive SQL clients, web clients and authorization clients. The Reactive Oracle Client was added to the Vert.x suite of database clients. Further details may be found in the release notes and the document containing deprecations and breaking changes.
Cryostat
Red Hat has introduced a new container-native JVM application, Cryostat 2.0, that provides a secure API for profiling and monitoring containers with JDK Flight Recorder. Cryostat can retrieve, store, and analyze flight recordings from containerized JVMs to assess the overall health of an application. JFR recordings can be uploaded to JDK Mission Control or Grafana for further analysis. An introduction to Cryostat may be found at this blog post.
GraalVM Native Build Tools
Oracle Labs has released version 0.9.7.1 of Native Build Tools, a GraalVM project consisting of plugins for interoperability with GraalVM Native Image. This is as a bug fix release to address test execution on a multi-project build with the Maven plugin declared in a parent pom.xml file.
Liberica Native Image Kit
BellSoft has released Liberica Native Image Kit (NIK) 21.3, their downstream distribution of GraalVM. Built on Liberica JDK 17 and JDK 11, new features include: initial support for JPMS; configure Reflection and JNI configuration files during analysis to yield smaller native images; a new adaptive garbage collection policy for better GC performance; and the native image utility can now read command-line arguments.
JDKMon
The latest version of JDKMon, a new tool that monitors and updates installed JDKs, has been made available to the Java community. Created by Gerrit Grunwald, principal engineer at Azul, version 17.0.7 features: added support for Bi Sheng JDK, Tencent Kona JDK and Semeru Certified. There is also a dependency upgrade to JavaFX 17.0.1 and updates to some plugins and the UI.
