Java Development Kit 15, Oracle’s implementation of the next version of Java SE (Standard Edition), becomes available as a production release today, September 15, 2020. Highlights of JDK 15 include text blocks, hidden classes, a foreign-memory access API, the Z Garbage Collector, and previews of sealed classes, pattern matching, and records.
JDK 15 is just a short-term release, only to be supported with Oracle Premier Support for six months until JDK 16 arrives next March. JDK 17, the next Long-Term Support release, to be supported by Oracle for eight years, is slated to arrive one year from now, as per Oracle’s six-month release cadence for Java SE versions.
Developers can look at JDK 15 now to get an idea of what will be in JDK 17, Georges Saab, president of Oracle’s Java Platform Group, said. The current LTS release is JDK 11, which arrived in September 2018. LTS releases arrive every three years. JDK 15 follows JDK 14, which was released on March 17, 2020.
The new features and changes in OpenJDK 15: