• Schedule:
• 2021/06/10       Rampdown Phase One
• 2021/07/15        Rampdown Phase Two
• 2021/08/05        Initial Release Candidate
• 2021/08/19        Final Release Candidate
• 2021/09/14        General Availability

• Important JEPs have been integrated – Attention Required!
• JEP 411: Deprecate the Security Manager for Removal
• Deprecate, for removal, most Security Manager related classes and methods.
• Warning message at startup if the Security Manager is enabled on the command line.
• Warning message at run time if a Java application or library installs a Security Manager dynamically.
• Deprecation is in concert with the legacy Applet API (JEP 398).
• JEP 407: Remove RMI Activation
• Removal the Remote Method Invocation (RMI) Activation mechanism, while preserving the rest of RMI.
• It was deprecated for removal by JEP 385 in Java SE 15.
• JEP 403: Strongly Encapsulate JDK Internals
• Strongly encapsulate all internal elements of the JDK, except for critical internal APIs such as sun.misc.Unsafe.
• It will no longer be possible to relax the strong encapsulation of internal elements via a single command-line option.

• Other features integrated in JDK 17:
• JEP 306: Restore Always-Strict Floating-Point Semantics
• JEP 356: Enhanced Pseudo-Random Number Generators
• JEP 382: New macOS Rendering Pipeline
• JEP 391: macOS/AArch64 Port
• JEP 398: Deprecate the Applet API for Removal
• JEP 406: Pattern Matching for switch (Preview)
• JEP 409: Sealed Classes
• JEP 410: Remove the Experimental AOT and JIT Compiler
• JEP 412: Foreign Function & Memory API (Incubator)
• JEP 414: Vector API (Second Incubator)
• JEP 415: Context-Specific Deserialization Filters

OpenJDK 17 Early Access build 26 is available at https://jdk.java.net/17

• These early-access , open-source builds are provided under the
• GNU General Public License, version 2, with the Classpath Exception

• Release Notes are available at https://jdk.java.net/17/release-notes 

• Changes in recent builds that maybe of interest:
• Build 26:
• JDK-8268241: deprecate JVM TI Heap functions 1.0
  
• JDK-8266846: Add java.time.InstantSource
  
• JDK-8248268: Support KWP in addition to KW
  
• JDK-8204686: Dynamic parallel reference processing support for Parallel GC
• JDK-8259530: Generated docs contain MIT/GPL-licenced works without reproducing the licence [Reported by Apache Maven]
• JDK-8266766: Arrays of types that cannot be an annotation member do not yield exceptions [Reported by ByteBuddy]
• JDK-8266598: Exception values for AnnotationTypeMismatchException are not always informative [Reported by ByteBuddy]
  
• Build 25
• JDK-8266653: Change update mode for JDK rpm/deb installers as it breaks "yum update" for JDK11+
• JDK-8263202: Update Hebrew/Indonesian/Yiddish ISO 639 language codes to current
• JDK-8229517: Support for optional asynchronous/buffered logging
• JDK-8182043: Access to Windows Large Icons

• These early-access , open-source builds are provided under the
• GNU General Public License, version 2, with the Classpath Exception
• Issues addressed in this build - here
  

Other Topics which might be of Interest:

• Java Cryptographic Roadmap [2] has been updated.
• Inside Java Newscast #6 [3]
• a closer look at the list of JEPs of JDK 17 as well as the development process
  
• Inside Java Newscast #7 [4]
• discusses in greater detail `pattern matching for switch`, previewed in JDK 17
  

Rgds,Rory

-- 
Rgds, Rory O'Donnell
Quality Engineering Manager
Oracle EMEA, Dublin, Ireland