Quarkus, Red Hat’s Kubernetes-native Java stack geared for cloud and microservices applications, is set to move to internal testing before potentially being opened up to developers as a product offering in coming months.

With Quarkus, Red Hat aims to enable smaller footprints for Java applications, making them more amenable to container deployments, more portable, and easier to deploy into cloud-native environments.

The current roadmap for open source Quarkus includes the following phases:

Phase 1 involves an internal test case in which a Red Hat Java product, a registry server for looking up services and binding to them, will be rehosted on Quarkus. The plan is to reduce the application footprint. Testing will be done later this year with general availability by early next year.

Phase 2 would involve making Quarkus available to developers as a supported, productized technology. Developer tools will be available. Both existing and new Java apps could benefit. The intent is for developers to be able to build Java microservices applications that have the footprint and speed of languages such as Go and Node.js. This could be enabled by removing one-time overhead such as configuration loading and compiling it into the binary using the GraalVM virtual machine. If code cannot be compiled into binary, optimizations could be made. A developer preview is sought for early next year. No target date has been set for general availability.

Quarkus is Red Hat’s attempt to keep Java relevant in a future of container-based, cloud-native applications. These applications likely will have to support a reactive programming model. Red Hat expects Quarkus to benefit the company’s middleware portfolio and cloud-native OpenShift platform.

[ Click here to sign up for a free three-hour course on getting started with Kubernetes, presented by Pluralsight and InfoWorld. ]

Get started with Quarkus

Developers can find instructions for getting started with Quarkus at the project website.