Question

Hi guys : I’ve seen some increased traffic about java 7 lately, however suns sight isn’t clear on wether there do or do not exist java 7 versions that are running in production environments. Also, I’ve seen that there is the open jdk 7 resources are available, but i havent been able to find a download…

So – am I just behind the times here with my Java SE 6 ? What is the release date for java 7 and where is the ideal place to get updates on it ?

Im talking about the JDK here. And if it is available – where ? I see alot of “previews” but no official site ?

Answer 1

On Java 6: no you aren’t. Sun’s policy was, a major version of JDK expires in a year after a new one is released. I’m not sure about Oracle policies, but it’s still a good rule of thumb.

Update: Java 6 End-of-Life policy is as follows:

• released Dec 2006
• EOL notification Feb 2011
• EOL Jul 2012

Java SE 6 will no longer be publicly available after July 2012.

On Java 7: the official release date was 2011-07-07, with Update 1 released 2011-10-18.

So everything is here; you’re free to use Java 7 in production. Java 6 will be more or less obsolete starting July 2012, but many will continue to use it, anyway: it doesn’t make much sense to replace what’s not broken.

Regarding Java 7 on Mac, (emphasis is mine—Alf)

As of the release of Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 3, the version of Java that is ported by Apple, and that ships with Mac OS X, is deprecated.
This means that the Apple-produced runtime will not be maintained at the same level, and may be removed from future versions of Mac OS X. The Java runtime shipping in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, and Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, will continue to be supported and maintained through the standard support cycles of those products.

But I assume you’re not running your production code on Mac 🙂