This week’s Java roundup for July 14th, 2025, features news highlighting: JDK 25 in rampdown phase 2; the seventh milestone release of Spring Framework 7.0; the July 2025 editions of the Payara Platform, Open Liberty and Oracle Critical Patch Update; and Eclipse DataGrid is open-sourced.
OpenJDK
After its review had concluded, JEP 504, Remove the Applet API, was elevated from Proposed to Target to Targeted for JDK 26. This JEP proposes to remove the Applet API, deprecated in JDK 17, due its continued obsolescence since applets are no longer supported in web browsers.
Oracle has released versions 24.0.2, 21.0.8, 17.0.16, 11.0.28, and 8u462 of the JDK as part of the quarterly Critical Patch Update Advisory for July 2025. More details on this release may be found in the release notes for version 24.0.2, version 21.0.8, version 17.0.16, version 11.0.28 and version 8u461.
JDK 25
Build 32 of the JDK 25 early-access builds was made available this past week featuring updates from Build 31 that include fixes for various issues. Further details on this release may be found in the release notes.
As per the JDK 25 release schedule, Mark Reinhold, chief architect, Java Platform Group at Oracle, formally declared that JDK 25 has entered Rampdown Phase Two. This means that: no additional JEPs will be added for JDK 25; and there will be a focus on the P1 and P2 bugs which can be fixed via the Fix-Request Process. Late enhancements are still possible, with the Late-Enhancement Request Process, but Reinhold states that “the bar is now extraordinarily high.” The final set of 18 features for the GA release in March 2025 will include:
JDK 25 is designated to be the next long-term support (LTS) release following JDK 21, JDK 17, JDK 11 and JDK 8.
JDK 26
Build 7 of the JDK 26 early-access builds was also made available this past week featuring updates from Build 6 that include fixes for various issues. More details on this release may be found in the release notes.
GraalVM
The release of GraalVM for JDK 24 Community 24.0.2 features fixes based on the Oracle Critical Patch Update for July 2025. These include: use of the DWORD type for comparing search values in the AMD64ArrayIndexOfOp class; and a resolution to a Java UnsatisfiedLinkError, an error thrown if the JVM cannot find an appropriate native-language definition of a method declared as native, when using the JDK Flight Recorder. Further details on this release may be found in the release notes.
BellSoft
Concurrent with Oracle’s Critical Patch Update (CPU) for July 2025, BellSoft has released CPU patches for versions 21.0.7.0.1, 17.0.15.0.1, 11.0.27.0.1, 8u461, 7u471 and 6u471 of Liberica JDK, their downstream distribution of OpenJDK, to address this list of CVEs. In addition, Patch Set Update (PSU) versions 24.0.2, 21.0.8, 17.0.16, 11.0.28 and 8u461, containing CPU and non-critical fixes, have also been released.
Spring Framework
The seventh milestone release of Spring Framework 7.0.0 delivers bug fixes, improvements in documentation, dependency upgrades and new features such as: new dedicated @Retryable, @ConcurrencyLimit and @EnableResilientMethods annotations as part of the new Resiliency Features; a new JmsClient interface to provide common send and receive operations against a JMS destination; and a new HttpMessageConverters interface to build and configure an immutable collection of HttpMessageConverter instances for client or server usage. More details on this release may be found in the release notes.
Payara Platform
Payara has released their July 2025 edition of the Payara Platform that includes Community Edition 6.2025.7, Enterprise Edition 6.28.0 and Enterprise Edition 5.77.0. All three editions deliver: critical bug fixes, component upgrades and new features: improved Trino SQL query engine support for handling JDBC connections; and removal of the CDI Deve Mode that streamlines implementation of the Jakarta Context and Dependency Injection 4.1 specification resulting in reduced complexity and improved performance.
This edition also delivers Payara 7.2025.1.Alpha3 that advances support for Jakarta EE 11 with new features: removal of the X-Powered-By header for improved security; and a new bundle that supports all the Jakarta EE 11 XML Schemas.
Further details on these releases may be found in the release notes for Community Edition 6.2025.7 and Enterprise Edition 6.28.0 and Enterprise Edition 5.77.0.
Open Liberty
The release of Open Liberty 25.0.0.7 features extending the scope of the maxFiles parameter in Open Liberty’s access logging configuration that improves “log file cleanup and helps ensure that all matching log files in the output directory are considered, not just those generated by the current process.“
Helidon
The release of Helidon 4.2.4 delivers bug fixes, dependency upgrades and notable changes such as: migrate use of the deprecated GlobalConfig class and the overloaded global() method, defined in the Config interface, to the get() method defined in the Services class; and support for Gson to complement their existing media support for Jackson, Jakarta JSON Processing and Jakarta JSON Binding. More details on this release may be found in the release notes.
Eclipse Foundation
Microstream has announced that Eclipse DataGrid, a new project introduced at JCON Europe 2025, is now available as open-source. DataGrid is a merger of EclipseStore and the MicroStream Cluster that enables in-memory searching and complex in-memory data manipulation. Developers who would like to learn more can attend the Eclipse Data Grid Introduction: In-Memory Data Processing free virtual event on Tuesday, July 22, 2025.
Micrometer
The first milestone release of Micrometer Metrics 1.16.0 delivers bug fixes, improvements in documentation, dependency upgrades and new features such as: a new withNoneValue() method, defined in the KeyName interface, to create an instance of the KeyValue interface with no value; and the addition of new classes to support observability using Jakarta Mail that complements the existing functionality with Jakarta Messaging. Further details on this release may be found in the release notes.
The first milestone release of Micrometer Tracing 1.6.0 delivers dependency upgrades and new features such as: a migration of their nullability annotations to JSpecify; and support for extracting multiple values for a single key in the Propagator interface for compliance with the W3C baggage specifications. More details on this release may be found in the release notes.
Project Reactor
The fifth milestone release of Project Reactor 2025.0.0 provides dependency upgrades to reactor-core 3.8.0-M5, reactor-netty 1.3.0-M5, reactor-pool 1.2.0-M5, reactor-addons 3.6.0-RC3 and reactor-kotlin-extensions 1.3.0-RC2. Further details on this release may be found in the release notes.
Similarly, Project Reactor 2024.0.8, the eighth maintenance release, provides dependency upgrades to reactor-core 3.7.8 and reactor-netty 1.2.8. There was also a realignment to version 2024.0.8 with the reactor-pool 1.1.3, reactor-addons 3.5.2, reactor-kotlin-extensions 1.2.3 and reactor-kafka 1.3.23 artifacts that remain unchanged. Further details on this release may be found in the release notes.
