Java version history

• History

JDK 1.0

JDK 1.1

• an extensive retooling of the AWT event model
• inner classes added to the language
• JavaBeans
• JDBC
• RMI
• reflection which supported Introspection only, no modification at runtime was possible.
• JIT compiler on Microsoft Windows platforms, produced for JavaSoft by Symantec
• Internationalization and Unicode support originating from Taligent

  J2SE 1.2

• strictfp keyword
• the Swing graphical API was integrated into the core classes
• Sun's JVM was equipped with a JIT compiler for the first time
• Java plug-in
• Java IDL, an IDL implementation for CORBA interoperability
• Collections framework

  J2SE 1.3

• HotSpot JVM included
• RMI was modified to support optional compatibility with CORBA
• Java Naming and Directory Interface included in core libraries
• Java Platform Debugger Architecture
• JavaSound
• Synthetic proxy classes

  J2SE 1.4

• Language changes
• * assert keyword
• Library improvements
• * Regular expressions modeled after Perl regular expressions
• * Exception chaining allows an exception to encapsulate original lower-level exception
• * Internet Protocol version 6 support
• * Non-blocking I/O
• * Logging API
• * Image I/O API for reading and writing images in formats like JPEG and PNG
• * Integrated XML parser and XSLT processor
• * Integrated security and cryptography extensions
• * Java Web Start included
• * Preferences API

J2SE 5.0

• Generics: provides compile-time type safety for collections and eliminates the need for most typecasts
• Metadata: also called annotations; allows language constructs such as classes and methods to be tagged with additional data, which can then be processed by metadata-aware utilities
• Autoboxing/unboxing: automatic conversions between primitive types and primitive wrapper classes
• Enumerations: the enum keyword creates a typesafe, ordered list of values ; previously this could only be achieved by non-typesafe constant integers or manually constructed classes
• Varargs: the last parameter of a method can now be declared using a type name followed by three dots ; in the calling code any number of parameters of that type can be used and they are then placed in an array to be passed to the method, or alternatively the calling code can pass an array of that type
• Enhanced for each loop: the for loop syntax is extended with special syntax for iterating over each member of either an array or any, such as the standard classes
• Improved semantics of execution for multi-threaded Java programs; the new Java memory model addresses issues of complexity, effectiveness, and performance of previous specifications
• Static imports

• Automatic stub generation for RMI objects
• Swing: New skinnable look and feel, called synth
• The in package
• Scanner class for parsing data from various input streams and buffers

Versioning change

Java 5 updates

Java SE 6

• Support for older Win9x versions dropped; unofficially, Java 6 Update 7 was the last release of Java shown to work on these versions of Windows. This is believed to be due to the major changes in Update 10.
• Scripting Language Support : Generic API for tight integration with scripting languages, and built-in Mozilla JavaScript Rhino integration.
• Dramatic performance improvements for the core platform, and Swing.
• Improved Web Service support through JAX-WS.
• JDBC 4.0 support.
• Java Compiler API : an API allowing a Java program to select and invoke a Java Compiler programmatically.
• Upgrade of JAXB to version 2.0: Including integration of a StAX parser.
• Support for pluggable annotations.
• Many GUI improvements, such as integration of SwingWorker in the API, table sorting and filtering, and true Swing double-buffering.
• JVM improvements include: synchronization and compiler performance optimizations, new algorithms and upgrades to existing garbage collection algorithms, and application start-up performance.

Java 6 updates

Java SE 7

• JVM support for dynamic languages, with the new invokedynamic bytecode under JSR-292, following the prototyping work currently done on the Multi Language Virtual Machine
• Compressed 64-bit pointers
• These small language changes :
• Concurrency utilities under JSR 166
• New file I/O library adding support for multiple file systems, file metadata and symbolic links. The new packages are java.nio.file, java.nio.file.attribute and java.nio.file.spi
• Timsort is used to sort collections and arrays of objects instead of merge sort
• Library-level support for elliptic curve cryptography algorithms
• An XRender pipeline for Java 2D, which improves handling of features specific to modern GPUs
• New platform APIs for the graphics features originally implemented in version 6u10 as unsupported APIs
• Enhanced library-level support for new network protocols, including SCTP and Sockets Direct Protocol
• Upstream updates to XML and Unicode
• Java deployment rule sets

Java 7 updates

Java SE 8

• JSR 335, JEP 126: Language-level support for lambda expressions under Project Lambda and default methods which allow the addition of methods to interfaces without breaking existing implementations. There was an ongoing debate in the Java community on whether to add support for lambda expressions. Sun later declared that lambda expressions would be included in Java and asked for community input to refine the feature. Supporting lambda expressions also enables functional-style operations on streams of elements, such as MapReduce-inspired transformations on collections. Default methods allow an author of an API to add new methods to an interface without breaking the old code using it. Although it was not their primary intent, default methods also allow multiple inheritance of behavior.
• JSR 223, JEP 174: Project Nashorn, a JavaScript runtime which allows developers to embed JavaScript code within applications
• JSR 308, JEP 104: Annotation on Java types
• Unsigned integer arithmetic
• JSR 337, JEP 120: Repeating annotations
• JSR 310, JEP 150: Date and time API
• JEP 178: Statically-linked JNI libraries
• JEP 153: Launch JavaFX applications
• JEP 122: Remove the permanent generation

Java 8 updates

Java SE 9

• JSR 376: Modularization of the JDK under Project Jigsaw
• JEP 222: JShell: The Java Shell
• JEP 295: Ahead-of-time compilation
• JEP 268: XML catalogs
• JEP 266: More concurrency updates. It includes a Java implementation of Reactive Streams, including a new Flow class that included the interfaces previously provided by Reactive Streams
• JEP 193: Variable handles: define a standard means to invoke the equivalents of various java.util.concurrent.atomic and sun.misc.Unsafe operations
• JEP 282: jlink: The Java Linker: create a tool that can assemble and optimize a set of modules and their dependencies into a custom run-time image. It effectively allows to produce a fully usable executable including the JVM to run it
• JavaDB was removed from JDK
• JEP 263: HiDPI graphics: automatic scaling and sizing
• JEP 254: Compact Strings
• JEP 213: Milling Project Coin
• * Allow @SafeVarargs on private instance methods
• * Allow effectively-final variables to be used as resources in the try-with-resources statement
• * Allow diamond with anonymous classes if the argument type of the inferred type is denotable
• * Complete the removal, begun in Java SE 8, of underscore from the set of legal identifier names
• * Support for private methods in interfaces

History

Java 9 updates

Java SE 10

• JEP 286: Local-variable type inference
• JEP 317: Experimental Java-based JIT compiler. This is the integration of the Graal dynamic compiler for the Linux x64 platform
• JEP 310: Application class-data sharing. This allows application classes to be placed in the shared archive to reduce startup and footprint for Java applications
• JEP 322: Time-based release versioning
• JEP 307: Parallel full GC for G1
• JEP 304: Garbage-collector interface
• JEP 314: Additional Unicode language-tag extensions
• JEP 319: Root certificates
• JEP 312: Thread-local handshakes
• JEP 316: Heap allocation on alternative memory devices
• JEP 313: Remove the native-header generation tool – javah
• JEP 296: Consolidate the JDK forest into a single repository

  Java 10 updates

Java SE 11

• JEP 309: Dynamic class-file constants
• JEP 318: Epsilon: a no-op garbage collector
• JEP 323: Local-variable syntax for lambda parameters
• JEP 331: Low-overhead heap profiling
• JEP 321: HTTP client
• JEP 332: Transport Layer Security 1.3
• JEP 328: Flight recorder
• JEP 333: ZGC: a scalable low-latency garbage collector
• JavaFX, Java EE and CORBA modules have been removed from JDK
• JEP 335: Deprecated the Nashorn JavaScript engine
• Unicode 10.0.0 support

Java 11 updates

Java SE 12

• JEP 189: Shenandoah: A Low-Pause-Time Garbage Collector
• JEP 230: Microbenchmark Suite
• JEP 325: Switch Expressions
• JEP 334: JVM Constants API
• JEP 340: One AArch64 Port, Not Two
• JEP 341: Default CDS Archives
• JEP 344: Abortable Mixed Collections for G1
• JEP 346: Promptly Return Unused Committed Memory from G1

  Java 12 updates

Java SE 13

• Java 13 updates

Java SE 14

• Java 14 updates

Java SE 15

Java 15 updates

Java SE 16

Java 16 updates

Possible future features

• Value types, objects without identity but with an efficient memory layout.
• 64-bit addressable arrays to support large data sets.
• Pattern matching, a mechanism for testing and deconstruction values. This feature might be added to the switch-expression and the instance-of-expression.
• Sealed types, a mechanism for declaring all possible subclasses of a class. Together with the record and pattern matching features this is used to implement algebraic data types.
• Improved interoperability with native code, to enable Java source code to call functions and use data types from other languages, in a way that is easier and have better performance than today.
• Virtual threads, a lightweight user-mode scheduled alternative to standard OS managed threads. Virtual threads are mapped to OS threads in many-to-many reliationship, in contrast to many-to-one relationship from :en:Green_threads#Green_threads_in_the_Java_virtual_machine|original green threads implementation in early versions of Java.

  Implementations