Vita Santrucek's Weblog: Java SE quality, metrics ..

We're currently finishing the work on Java SE 6 update 14. It is planned to be released shortly with yet another big set of bug fixes, performance improvements and new features. You can check out the last publicly available build (b06) from the usual early access location: https://jdk6.dev.java.net/6uNea.html. Let us know if you find any good candidates for fixing in the next update release.

JDK 7 work has been ongoing and especially from the beginning of this year we've made some significant progress. To get your hands on the latest of the latest you can experiment with the most recent build (b58) from: http://download.java.net/jdk7/. I'll be posting more information on the status of JDK 7 and the quality aspect of it in particular soon. Stay tuned ...

I'm happy to announce Sun's just released Java SE 6 update 12. You can download it from java.sun.com separately or as part of a bundle with Java EE or Netbeans.

So what changed? On a high level, these are the areas of our fucus in this release:

   * 64-bit browser support for Java Plugin and Java WebStart
   * Enhancements for Java FX
   * AWT enhancements
   * Windows Server 2008 support
   * Performance improvements
   * and ... lots of bug fixes

For more details and the change IDs check out the release notes. Before downloading 6u12 make sure you're selecting the right file for your computer's configuration:

"Please note that the 64-bit JRE only works with the 64-bit browser
plug-in, while the 32-bit JRE only works with 32-bit browser plug-in.
If you use both 32-bit and 64-bit browsers interchangeably, you will
need to have both 32-bit and 64-bit JRE's installed on your machine."

Hopefully, you'll find these improvements useful, let us know if you encounter any issues and thank you for the feedback during the early access program, it gave us a lot of useful information.

A couple of weeks back our teams started to work on another significant milestone of Java SE in the 6 family - 6u12. Even though it is "just" one of the updates, it is going to bring some of the new major functionality the Java users have been asking for, for a long time. The complete list of new features will be published upon the release, but to highlight some of the ones some of you might find interesting:

• 64-bit plugin* Support 64-bit Java Plug-in and Java webstart on Windows/Linux on AMD64 (4802695) - allows running applets and Java WebStart applications in a 64-bit VM in a 64-bit browser on the supported platforms


• Lightweight/heavyweight component mixing* Allow limited mixing of heavy and lightweight components (4811096) - enables easier embedding


• Windows Server 2008 support

* to prevent possible confusion I've replaced the short feature name with the change request's (CR) synopsis. To see more details, click the CR id.

Now the best part - all of these features have already been integrated in the early access builds. You can check the latest (b02) one out on the http://jdk6.dev.java.net portal, or directly at the download page - http://download.java.net/jdk6/. The plan is to publish all builds until the GA (General Availability) release, so check back often for new builds.

Give it a try and let us if you encounter any issues. The best way is through this page.

As a part of deploying the OpenJDK portal we are also including some of the basic quality metrics for the JDK 7. The goal behind this is to provide insight into the quality processes used in the development cycle and quality of the release it self.

The OpenJDK Quality Metrics page is at http://openjdk.java.net/groups/quality/metrics/index.html.

We have taken the Goal - Question - Metric approach (look here or here for details) with the initial goal of "Explain the quality and related processes". More about the planned goals (and questions/metrics) will be published soon on this blog.

For the first phase we have created just two metrics - the overall defect flow and the flow of regressions. Both of the charts are available in a version showing absolute (# of defects)

and relative (%) numbers:

Each of the charts is available on both the overall and component level so you can see the status the whole Java as well as the work being done on Swing, JDBC or any other component you are interested in. On the general level some additional stats are available - total # of defects (in various states), RFEs, etc:

All the charts are accompanied with a list of defects that were either Submitted, Fixed or Closed in the last 7 days to better show what the lines in the charts mean (a sample list of submitted/fixed/closed defects is here. The bug lists are linked with the bugs.sun.com database. Yet they are showing some information that is not (yet) available on bugs.sun.com.

At this stage the charts and lists of defects will be re-generated automatically, once per day and published on the portal at around 8 AM GMT.

Enough theory, go look for your self and let us know, what you think ..