Madhura's Blog

Java SE 6, codename Mustang, Beta was released. Who am I and why am I talking about Mustang, you ask? Well, I work for the Java SE Quality organization. And my role, in short, is to be the quality watchdog, the voice of the customer (you) for Mustang. All of us in Mustang team are working really hard to make it the best release ever. Of all the things about working on Mustang, the most fun is, we are carving it right in front of you folks. Asking you to comment, to point us to BIG No-Nos, to give us a hand with smoothing some of Mustang's edges. Some of us call it transperncy, becoming open, engaging with the community, or if you would like, having our dirty laundry out in the open. Don't know about you, but we are enjoying every bit of the conversation, interaction with you.

Enough of my rambling, let me get to the question in the title. If you don't already know, Mustang beta is based on B59 while the latest available snapshot is B71. Hmmm... Why would we do that? And why would anyone want to get the Beta when 3 month newer bits are available? Well, strange as it may sound to the daredevils, the flying tomatoes of software, not everybody wants to experiment with the latest and the greatest and potentially unstable bits. (Fortunately we haven't heard any of them having major problems so far.) So snapshots do not go through any system testing before we post them. And Betas are meant for a different audience. It's for those who are looking for stable feature complete bits. The enterprise, the corporate kinds. So, in order for Mustang beta bits to reach a stable stage, B59 is when we closed the gates for Beta. The quality team, which I am a part of, started hammering at B59 with all the weapons for weeks. We cycled these bits through most of the supported configurations, through all our internal weapons. Through the whole gamut of testing. Just to name a few: the unit, functional, compatibility, reliability, performance and so on. There were some respins along the way to fix the issues we felt would have blocked Beta feedback. And finally when we met the criteria we had set for our Beta, we announced victory and pushed those bits out. While some of us were working at stabilizing these beta bits, our post-beta work continued. And so the latest snapshot you see is B71, while Beta is based on B59.

Does all this talk about stability mean the beta build is perfect? Well, ofcourse not. It does have some imperfections. But based on our analysis of these imperfections or defects, we do not believe they should block our beta audience from providing their valuable feedback.

And if most of the new work is done now, why do we need another 8-9 months till GA (Fall 2006)? A valid question, unless you know what all goes into ensuring only the best quality, most compatible release goes out as Mustang GA. I'll go into these details sometime later. For now good luck with playing with Mustang Beta or the latest snapshot, whichever satiates your need. And don't hesitate to contact us for anything you feel we can do better.

Oh and a bunch of us from the Mustang team are blogging about diffrent topics including the new cool features, the Mustang contests, other logistics. Go check the blog carnival out....