Re:Java 17 / JDK 17: General Availability
by the8472 on Tuesday September 14, 2021 @01:37PM
(#28528059)
> What the ideological and practical differences are between the JDKs
The builds may ship with different optional features enabled, such as various garbage collectors or I think support for the GraalVM stuff. Support terms differ.
> Why there are different JDKs -- I get that that it's good to have different language implementations, but there are really quite a lot!
Most of what you will get these days are just different builds of the OpenJDK class library + tools + Hotspot (JVM). Well, except for the android runtime, but we don't talk about that one.
Historically there have been been more JVMs and class libraries but that has been consolidated a lot since oracle opensourced it. There still is OpenJ9 and some smaller, more specialized ones.
The builds may ship with different optional features enabled, such as various garbage collectors or I think support for the GraalVM stuff. Support terms differ.
> Why there are different JDKs -- I get that that it's good to have different language implementations, but there are really quite a lot!
Most of what you will get these days are just different builds of the OpenJDK class library + tools + Hotspot (JVM). Well, except for the android runtime, but we don't talk about that one. Historically there have been been more JVMs and class libraries but that has been consolidated a lot since oracle opensourced it. There still is OpenJ9 and some smaller, more specialized ones.