JDK 8 M7 update

When I proposed the new JDK 8 schedule [1], since adopted [2], I wrote: The intent here is not to open the gates for a flood of new features, nor to permit the scope of existing features to grow without bound. We'd likely propose a select few additional features, especially in areas related to security. In general, however, we'd use the additional time to stabilize, polish, and fine-tune the features that we already have rather than add a bunch of new ones. In that spirit, I've added the following JEPs [3] to M7: * 176 Mechanical Checking of Caller-Sensitive Methods 178 Statically-Linked JNI Libraries 179 Document JDK API Support and Stability * 180 Handle Frequent HashMap Collisions with Balanced Trees * 184 HTTP URL Permissions Those marked with '*' are directly related to improving the security of the platform. The other two are reasonably small: - 178 is a small enhancement to JNI that's critical to the use of SE 8 in embedded scenarios; and - 179 builds on 162 (Prepare for Modularization) and proposes to define one or more annotations to document the stability of JDK-specific APIs. I've dropped these two JEPs because they won't be ready for JDK 8: 143 Improve Contended Locking 165 Compiler Control Finally, I've retrospectively added 177 Optimize java.text.DecimalFormat.format to M5; the code was integrated back in October, but the JEP got lost in the noise. Also of note is 182 Policy for Retiring javac -source and -target Options which is not a feature JEP for JDK 8 per se, but rather a new long-term policy that has been proposed to take effect in JDK 8. Finally, just yesterday I posted one more security-related JEP: 185 JAXP 1.5: Restrict Fetching of External Resources This will likely be added to M7 after suitable review. I've updated the JDK 8 feature and milestone pages accordingly [4][5]. - Mark [1] http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/jdk8-dev/2013-April/002336.html [2] http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/jdk8-dev/2013-April/002413.html [3] http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/ [4] http://openjdk.java.net/projects/jdk8/features [5] http://openjdk.java.net/projects/jdk8/milestones