作者彙整: Paul Krill

The Eclipse Foundation has released the Jakarta EE 8 platform and web profile specifications, which constitute Eclipse’s implementation of Java Enterprise Edition 8. The group also made available a Jakarta EE application server and open source technology compatibility kits (TCK) for testing compliant implementations.

The Jakarta EE specifications can be accessed at the project website. Specifications range from Jakarta Annotations, which represent semantics for declarative programming, to Jakarta Server Pages, which define a template engine for web applications.

Along with the specifications, Eclipse is releasing Eclipse GlassFish 5.1, an open source application server that implements the Jakarta EE Platform. Jakarta EE 8-compliant servers are expected from various Java server vendors; IBM’s Open Liberty server already has been certified as Jakarta EE 8-compatible.

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Java’s G1 garbage collector would benefit from greater throughput and reduced CPU usage through a plan being floated in the OpenJDK community.

A draft JDK Enhancement Proposal (JEP) titled, “Throughput post-write barrier for G1,” would have the collector use a throughput-optimized barrier when concurrent refinement has been disabled to achieve better throughput at the cost of latency on certain workloads that are not latency-sensitive.

The plan would be implemented through a new JVM flag, -XX:-G1UseConcRefinement, which would turn off concurrent refinement and allow G1 to use a “throughput post-write barrier.” G1UseConcRefinement would be enabled by default, while the use of -XX:-G1UseConcRefinement would boost G1’s throughput and cut CPU usage, according to the proposal. The simplified write barrier would be much shorter in length, improving the cache hit rate. This mode would cut the workload for handling a dirty card and compilation work for JIT compilers. Further, the mode would reduce memory footprint by shrinking remembered sets and not using per-thread dirty card queues.

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Quarkus, Red Hat’s Kubernetes-native Java stack geared for cloud and microservices applications, is set to move to internal testing before potentially being opened up to developers as a product offering in coming months.

With Quarkus, Red Hat aims to enable smaller footprints for Java applications, making them more amenable to container deployments, more portable, and easier to deploy into cloud-native environments.

The current roadmap for open source Quarkus includes the following phases:

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Kotlin 1.4, a planned upgrade to the statically typed JVM language created by JetBrains, is set to add null-check optimizations.

Starting with the Kotlin 1.4 release, all runtime checks will throw a java.lang.NullPointerException instead of a KotlinNullPointerException, IllegalStateException, IllegalArgumentException, and TypeCastException. 

The change is designed to open up more possibilities for null check optimizations by the Kotlin compiler or bytecode processing tools such as the Android R8 optimizer. It will apply to the !! operator, parameter full checks in the method preamble, the as operator with a non-null type, and platform-typed expression null checks. The change will not apply to lateinit null checks and explicit library calls such as checkNotNull or requireNotNull.

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Ruby on Rails 6.0, the latest version of the veteran web application framework, has improvements for composing rich text content and JavaScript integration.

Version 6.0 of the 15-year-old framework includes the Action Text framework for rich text content and editing, using the Trix editor for formatting. Text edited by Trix is saved to its own rich text model associated with any Active Record model in the application. Also with Action Text, embedded images or other attachments are automatically stored using Active Storage.

Other improvements in Ruby on Rails 6.0 include:

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Software delivery platform provider CloudBees is looking to establish the category of software delivery management, to address siloed development processes, as well as to make the open source Jenkins CI/CD system available as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering.

Software delivery management via SaaS

CloudBees’s planned SaaS-based SDM platform would tie together all artifacts, data, and events across an organization’s devops tool chain into a unified system of record. The goal is to improve collaboration between teams by providing universal insights, connected processes, and governance.

SDM coordinates software delivery in an organization, serving as a sort of CRM for software delivery. The idea for SDM arose out of the notion that once companies use CI/CD, they realize they have created silos of data, processes, and teams. SDM is intended to capture signals from all the tools in use to show what is taking place.

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