Java 7

Java 7 Standard Edition has just been released, this 28 July 2011.

As is generally the case with any major Java release, a few bugs whose impact was perhaps not anticipated in test releases are now coming home to roost as Java 7 is gradually released "into the wild".

A key issue to have come forward at present appears to be that some buggy JIT compiler optimisations that you had to explicitly enable in Java 7 are now enabled by default in Java 7. The bugs specifically revolve around the unrolling of nested loops. As I've mentioned today in the Javamex blog, I think that this Java 7 Hotspot bug is serious, at least for what it says about the Java release process if not for the details of the bug itself.

How to get round the Java 7 bug

If you experience Hotspot errors after upgrading to Java 7, then as a first recourse you should probably try the following:

Updates/other information

1 August 2011: Oracle has raised the priority of these bugs and will be releasing an early update.

If you have any more information that you think should be shared with people here, then please tweet it to @BitterCoffey.