While JDK 9 is not yet feature complete, it is moving closer to a delivery date.

The promise that things will get better was made by Oracle's Mark Reinhold, writing to the Open JDK mailing list. He posted partially to allay fears that Oracle has frozen the JDK 9 feature set. The rumours arose because the JDK 9 schedule lists a date for the Feature Complete milestone of 2016/5/26, which passed without any sign of announcement. Reinhold said that:

"There's been some concern that this means that the JDK 9 (and hence Java SE 9) feature set is somehow frozen, but that's not the case."

He reiterated that the milestones listed in the JDK 9 schedule are condition-driven rather than date-driven, saying that

"If we miss a date then we don't just blindly constrain further work so as to fit the date, we instead manage the remaining changes relevant to the milestone so as to reach its goal in a reasonable time frame without putting the final GA date at undue risk"

When the Feature Complete milestone is reached, all the planned features, from JEPs to smaller enhancements, will have been integrated into the JDK 9 master forest, together with their unit tests.

At the point Reinhold made the posting, most JEPs targeted to JDK 9 have been completed, but 15 JEPs remained to be completed, along with a number of small enhancements are listed as intended for JDK 9 but are still either open or in progress. Reinhold proposed a way forward of reviewing all unfinished JEPs to see what work remains to be done, then deciding whether the overall project should be delayed again to wait for the outstanding feature, or alternatively whether the feature should be removed from the scope for this version. The owners of the JEPs can either request an extension of the deadline saying when they estimate the work will be completed, or accept they're not going to make it in time for JDK 9. This process is now underway.

Of the JEPs that are being considered, some have been granted an extension, with a review date of September 1st. This is three months after the previously agreed date for Feature Complete status. If the other future dates move by the same amount, that would mean a release date of June 2017.  

More Information

JDK 9 is not (yet) Feature Complete - how will we get there?

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