Java News: JDK 18/19 Updates, Spring Framework Releases, New Value Objects JEP

OpenJDK

JEP Draft 8277163 (Value Objects Preview) has moved from Draft to Submitted, and according to its lead Dan Smith it is now a Candidate. The JEP proposes value objects—identity‑less value classes that define instance behavior—and is related to JEP 401 (Primitive Classes) as part of the Valhalla project.

JDK 18

JDK 18 Build 37 has been released; compared with Build 36 there are no notable changes. The GA release is less than a month away, and the updated release notes include links to the full API specification and a diff of API changes between JDK 17 (Build 35) and JDK 18 (Build 37).

JDK 19

Early‑access Build 11 of JDK 19 is now available, updating Build 10 with numerous bug fixes. Details are in the release notes. Developers are encouraged to file bugs via the Java issue tracker for both JDK 18 and JDK 19.

Spring Framework

The Spring team has released many minor and milestone versions for Spring Boot, Spring Data, Spring Security, Spring Session, Spring Shell, and Spring Batch.

Spring Boot 2.7.0‑M1 includes 137 bug fixes, documentation improvements, dependency upgrades, new test annotations for Couchbase and Elasticsearch, enhanced auto‑configuration registration using @AutoConfiguration , and support for OkHttp 4.9.3.

Spring Boot 2.6.4 and 2.5.10 have also been released, each bringing further bug fixes, documentation updates, and dependency upgrades.

Spring Data 3.0‑M2 introduces a ListCrudRepository interface that returns a List instead of the traditional Iterable , allowing developers to choose their preferred collection type.

Spring Security 5.7.0‑M2 deprecates WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter in favor of component‑based security configuration; a blog post explains how to migrate. Versions 5.6.2 and 5.5.5 add an AuthorizationManagerWebInvocationPrivilegeEvaluator that delegates checks to an AuthorizationManager instance.

Spring Session 2021.1.2 and 2021.0.5 upgrade core, Redis, JDBC, Hazelcast, and MongoDB modules to newer versions.

Spring Shell 2.1.0‑M3 adds preliminary work on a higher‑level UI component model to improve interactive experiences.

Spring Batch 4.3.5 includes bug fixes, dependency upgrades, a simplified query in JdbcStepExecutionDao , a @Nullable annotation on StepExecution.getEndtime() , and parameter checks for MongoItemReader.setSort() .

Quarkus

Quarkus 2.7.2.Final, a maintenance release, upgrades dependencies to Kogito 1.17.0.Final and OptaPlanner 8.17.0.Final.

JReleaser

On the path to version 1.0.0, JReleaser has published an early‑access build that adds Windows resources to the jpackage configuration, enabling the assembly of native package releases.