JDK 1.7 Editor

If you have been keeping up with the latest JDK 1.7 release notes then you are aware that JDK 1.7 will not work with any current version (that I have tested) of Eclipse or Netbeans (have not tested Intelli-J).  This is due to the new additions of the functional programming features: closures being the most notable one that blows up for me a lot of the times.

I do see there is a new September binary snapshot out there on [JDK 7 latest releases]: [02_SEP_2010 Release]

Netbeans JDK7 Beta Site [http://wiki.netbeans.org/Java_EditorJDK7]

Their Hudson Build server *two thumbs up for Continuous Integration* [http://bertram.netbeans.org/hudson/job/jdk7/]

Quick note: I call it a bug, Netbeans will call it a feature.  When you start the beta release, it will autodetect your JDK 1.7 version (even if you have multiple version, I run 6 version and it grabbed the right one).  However, it did not set the proper source/target version.  To correct this, after creating a new project, select the "Files" tab.  Open "project.properties" and scroll down to (in my release it was line: 39 and 40) and change the following lines from:

javac.source=1.5

javac.target=1.5

to

javac.source=1.7

javac.target=1.7

X== ... and there you go,  welcome to the future of Java ==X

*Recommend* Here is a great deck that does a really good job covering the latest features: [JDK-7 Future Features]

Simple closure example taken from the deck listed above:

The old way of managing the Exceptions and closing streams:

public void copy(String src, String dest) throws IOException {

InputStream in = new FileInputStream(src);

                try {

                                OutputStream out = new FileOutputStream(dest);

                                try {

                                                byte[] buf = new byte[8 * 1024];

                                                int n;

                                                while ((n = in.read(buf)) >= 0)

                                                out.write(buf, 0, n);

                                } finally {

                                                out.close();

                                }

                } finally {

                                in.close();

                }

}

The JDK 7 way:

static void copy(String src, String dest) throws IOException {

                try (InputStream  in  = new FileInputStream(src);

                OutputStream out = new FileOutputStream(dest)) {

                                byte[] buf = new byte[8192];

                                int n;

                                while ((n = in.read(buf)) >= 0)

                                                out.write(buf, 0, n);

                }

              //in and out will 'automagically' close

}