Roundup of Java news: String Templates, Quarkus, Open Liberty, PrimeFaces, JobRunr, Devnexus 2023

Published on April 11, 2023

We are pleased to bring you this week’s Java roundup for April 3rd, 2023, which includes news from OpenJDK, JDK 21, Quarkus 3.0.0.CR2 as well as 2.16.6.Final, Open Liberty 23.0.0.3, Apache Camel 3.18.6, PrimeFaces 12.0.4, JobRunr Lite 0.31.0, Gradle 8.1-RC3, and Devnexus 2023.

OpenJDK

A JEP 430 specification, String Templates (Preview), has been promoted from Candidate to Proposed to Target status for JDK 21. The purpose of this preview JEP, under the auspices of Project Amber, is to enhance Java’s programming language with string templates, string literals containing embedded expressions, that are interpreted at runtime during which the embedded expressions are evaluated and verified. On April 13, 2023, the review is expected to be completed.

The Java community is invited to review the first draft of the joint specification change document for JEP 440, Record Patterns, and JEP 441, Pattern Matching for Switch, published by Gavin Bierman, a consulting member of Oracle’s technical staff.

JDK 21

Additionally, Build 17 of the JDK 21 early-access builds was made available this past week, which includes updates from Build 16 that address a variety of issues. Please refer to the release notes for more information about this build.

JDK 21 developers are encouraged to report bugs via the Java Bug Database.

Quarkus

Quarkus 3.0.0’s second release candidate contains the following new features: Quarkus Update Gradle task to update Quarkus to new versions; Dev UI 2 is now available via the /q/dev or /q/dev-ui endpoint (Dev UI 1 is accessible via the /q/dev-v1 endpoint); and a new HTTP security policy mapping between roles and permissions. You can find more information about this release in the changelog.

This sixth maintenance release from Quarkus includes a number of noteworthy changes, including: the removal of the session cookie if ID token verification fails; the ability to use null in the body of the REST Client request; the ability to use repeatable @Incoming annotations in reactive messaging; and the upgrading of dependency libraries to GraphQL Java 19.4, Wildfly Elytron 1.20.3.Final, and Keycloak 21.0.1. For more information, please refer to the changelog.

Open Liberty

As part of the latest release of IBM Open Liberty 23.0.0.3, bug fixes and support have been added for: JDK 20; the Jakarta EE 10 Platform, Web, and Core profiles; as well as the core MicroProfile 6.0 specifications.

Apache Camel

Apache Camel 3.18.6 offers a number of improvements, dependency upgrades and fixes, including: the ability to return HTTP response headers with empty values for applications which require them; an improved handling of allowing or disallowing HTTP request bodies; and a fix for the possibility of blocking the Vert.x event loop when route processing takes place after the vertx-websocket consumer executes blocking operations. The release notes provide more information about this release.

PrimeFaces

It is important to note that PrimeFaces 12.0.4 ships with bug fixes and new features: the getExcelPattern() and validate() methods in the CurrencyValidator class have been restored;

The list of issues provides further details on this release.

JHipster

It has been announced that JHipster Lite version 0.31.0 has been released with a number of dependencies upgraded and notable changes, including the following: a fix for creating the same customConversion beans for MongoDB and Redis; a fix for Apache Kafka producer and consumer; and a removal of the Jest testing framework dependency, which was only used in the optional-typescript module. Please refer to the release notes for more information about this release.

JobRunr

A new version of JobRunr 6.1.3 makes it possible for developers to disable Java Management Extensions (JMX) for the JobStats class due to the high number of calls to jobrunr_job_stats.

Gradle

Gradle 8.1’s third release candidate contains further improvements to the configuration cache, support for dependency verification, improved error reporting for Groovy closures, and support for Java lambdas. You can find more information about this release in the release notes.

Devnexus

This past week, the Devnexus 2023 conference was held at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, Georgia. Several Java professionals presented workshops and presentations on topics such as: Jakarta EE, Java Platform, Core Java, Architecture, Cloud Infrastructure, and Security.

Developernexus, hosted by the Atlanta Java Users Group (AJUG), dates back to 2004, when it was originally known as DevCon. In 2010, Devnexus was introduced as a brand name.

As part of Frank Delporte’s Foojay.io podcast, developers can gain a deeper understanding of Devnexus and AJUG by listening to an interview with Pratik Patel, Azul Vice President of Developer Advocacy and AJUG president, and Vince Mayers, Gradle developer relations and AJUG treasurer, on Foojay.io.