Java 17 (21.9 LTS)

Java 17 is a feature release which will obsolete Java 16 and became a long-term support (LTS) release of Java on its introduction on 14th September 2021.

Current status: Early Access

Page last updated: 2021-05-03, EA 20

Schedule:

• 2021-06-10 Rampdown Phase One (fork from main line)
• 2021-07-15 Rampdown Phase Two
• 2021-08-05 Initial Release Candidate
• 2021-08-19 Final Release Candidate
• 2021-09-14 General Availability

Resources

• Java 17 Early-Access Builds (note: OpenJDK builds only; no Oracle builds)
• Release notes
• Jave SE 17 Platform

Selected Changes Targeted to Java 17

• 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 409: Sealed Classes
• JEP 414: Vector API (Second Incubator)
• JDK-6323374: Collections.unmodifiable* methods are idempotent for their corresponding collection. The unmodifiable* methods in java.util.Collections will no longer re-wrap a given collection with an unmodifiable view if that collection has already been wrapped by same method. (our unit tests still pass)
• JDK-8235139: Deprecate the socket impl factory mechanism
• JDK-8259709: Disable SHA-1 XML Signatures. XML signatures that use SHA-1 based digest or signature algorithms have been disabled by default. (our unit tests still pass)
• JDK-8259801: Enable XML Signature secure validation mode by default

Proposed to Target Java 17

• JEP 403: Strongly Encapsulate JDK Internals
• JEP 406: Pattern Matching for switch (Preview)
• JEP 407: Remove RMI Activation
• JEP 412: Foreign Function & Memory API (Incubator)

Significant Changes from Java 11 (18.9 LTS)

The following changes may factor in to our adoption of Java 17 as a new platform, and as a baseline for individual products:

From Java 12:

• JEP 182 and JDK-8028563: no more support for -source/-target/-release 1.6.

From Java 13:

• JDK-8215608: Old Features Removed from javadoc  tool. No more HTML4 API documentation.

From Java 14:

• JEP 361: Switch Expressions (Standard)

From Java 15:

• JEP 372: Remove the Nashorn JavaScript Engine
• JEP 378: Text Blocks (Standard)
• JEP 381: Remove the Solaris and SPARC Ports
• JDK-8237219: Disable native SunEC implementation by default (OSJ-319)

From Java 16:

• JEP 394: Pattern Matching for instanceof
• JEP 395: Records
• JEP 396: Strongly Encapsulate JDK Internals by Default

From Java 17:

• JEP 356: Enhanced Pseudo-Random Number Generators
• JEP 391: macOS/AArch64 Port (not clear if this will be back-ported to, e.g., Java 11 or not)