CJUG Adopt-A-JSR - September 2015 Meetup

On Tuesday, September 29th, the Chicago Java User Group (CJUG) held its second online only session that focused on the Adopt-a-JSR initiative for Java and Java EE.  CJUG has formally adopted JSR 366 - Java Platform, Enterprise Edition 8 (Java EE 8) Specification, and the group has been partaking in the Adopt-a-JSR initiative by promoting information regarding the upcoming Java EE release, and specifically targeting the JSRs that are part of the all-encompassing JSR 366 umbrella.

During this latest session, we provided a brief overview of the current status for each of the JSRs that are part of Java EE 8, and we paid special attention to those that are already in-progress.  To the point, the following JSRs are currently in active movement:

JSR 365 - CDI 2.0
JSR 367 - JSON-B
JSR 368 - JMS 2.1
JSR 369 - Servlet 4.0
JSR 370 - JAX-RS 2.1
JSR 371 - MVC 1.0
JSR 372 - JSF 2.3
JSR 374 - JSON-P
...and most recently, there has been mention of Java Batch 1.1 getting started...

It is also worth mentioning that there are a number of other JSRs planned for inclusion with Java EE 8, but they've not had much activity, as yet.

While not each of these JSRs have active sources that are ready for testing, they have all made some progress either via mailing list discussion, or early specification drafts.  After providing the overview, we delved into a couple of the more active JSRs, including JSR 372:  JSF 2.3, and JSR 374:  JSON-P.  In doing so, we demonstrated how to check out the sources for these JSRs, add them to an IDE, such as NetBeans, and then perform a build and testing.  While we did not have enough time to get into any specific issues in detail, we also looked at the JIRA for JSR 374 and held short discussions on a few of the issues.

We then took a break from Java EE, and focused a bit on OpenJDK and the JDK 9 project.  Bob Paulin demonstrated how it is possible to pull down the JDK 9 sources and begin working with early builds of the modularity solution now.  During Bob's demonstration, he created a fully-functional modular program.  We also discussed the possibility of future CJUG involvement in the Adopt-a-JSR program for Java SE.

In summary, the September 2015 Adopt-a-JSR session was a great chance for us to provide a current status of the ongoing efforts towards Java EE 8, and it also gave us a chance to demonstrate what is currently possible with JDK 9.

If you are interested in listening to the audio from the Adopt-a-JSR session, please use the following link:  Audio for CJUG Adopt-a-JSR Sept 2015

We plan to hold more sessions online that focus on Adopt-a-JSR in the near future.  Please stay tuned for more...