The Open Road

With Sun's implementation of Java now open-sourced and developed under the GPL by the OpenJDK Community on java.net, it's possible to observe and participate in the open development of the next version of Java. In this ongoing column, authors Elliotte Rusty Harold and David Flanagan will be your guide to Java 7, keeping track with the latest changes in the jdk7 project and taking a first deep dive into the libraries and technologies that will make up the next version.

The Open Road: Superpackages
Wonder what the relationship between com.example.package and com.example.package.test is? There isn't one! This lack of an orderly package-visibility relationship has made life difficult for a number of programmers trying to balance organizational needs against practical concerns. In this entry of "The Open Road," Elliotte Rusty Harold takes a look at how JSR 294 ("superpackages"), intended to be part of Java SE 7, proposes to fix this problem. Mar. 6, 2008

The Open Road: Building the JDK
Ready to work with the GPLed JDK from the OpenJDK project? Your first order of business will probably be getting the code compiled and running on your machine. And that's not an easy process. In this installment of The Open Road, Elliotte Rusty Harold relates the step-by-step process of building the JDK on Linux. Nov. 29, 2007

The Open Road: Looking Ahead to Java 7
Kicking off a new column about the development of Java 7, David Flanagan takes a look at the OpenJDK and JDK7 projects and their processes, language changes that have been mentioned as possible candidates for Java 7, and major new APIs that are tracking for inclusion in the new version. Aug. 9, 2007