Java News Roundup: OpenJDK JEPs, GlassFish, Spring AI, JReleaser, A2A Java SDK, Google ADK, Gradle

2026-05-04 · Source: InfoQ · Field: Technology & Digital — Software Development & Engineering, Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning · Depth: Intermediate, medium

Summary

The Java ecosystem saw significant updates on April 27th, 2026, including advancements for OpenJDK 27 with JEP 532 (Primitive Types in Patterns, instanceof, and switch - Fifth Preview) and JEP 533 (Structured Concurrency - Seventh Preview) elevated to "Targeted" and "Proposed to Target" respectively. JEP 531 (Lazy Constants - Third Preview) also moved to "Proposed to Target" with changes to the `LazyConstant` interface and a new `ofLazy()` factory method. JEP 536 (JFR In-Process Data Redaction) achieved "Candidate" status. Other notable releases include Spring AI 2.0.0-M5, GlassFish 9.0.0-M2 with JDK 21/25 support and Jakarta specifications, Quarkus 3.35.0 featuring a build-time dependency "tree shaker" and Reactive Transactions, JReleaser 1.24.0, LangChain4j 1.14.0, Gradle 9.5.0, Agent2Agent Java SDK 1.0.0-Beta1, Google ADK for Java 1.2.0, and Hardwood 1.0.0-Beta2 with Apache Parquet `VARIANT` type support.

Key takeaway

For NLP Engineers working with Java, the advancements in Spring AI 2.0.0-M5 and LangChain4j 1.14.0 offer improved flexibility for structured output and enhanced OpenAI API integration. You should explore these updates to streamline your AI service development and potentially leverage the new `IMMEDIATE_IF_LAST` return behavior for tool execution loops.

Key insights

Java's development continues with JDK 27 JEPs advancing and key frameworks releasing new versions with enhanced features.

Principles

• Iterative preview releases refine core Java features.
• Structured concurrency simplifies complex task management.

Method

The Agent2Agent Protocol (A2A) enables agentic applications to run as A2AServers, supporting JSON-RPC, gRPC, and HTTP+JSON/REST transport protocols with a flexible HTTP client.

In practice

• Use `StructuredOutputConverter` for custom structured output in Spring AI.
• Employ Quarkus's "tree shaker" to reduce application JAR sizes.
• Utilize Hardwood CLI's `dive` subcommand for interactive Parquet file analysis.

Topics

• OpenJDK JEPs
• JDK 27 Development
• Spring AI
• Jakarta EE Specifications
• Quarkus Framework

Code references

• openjdk/jdk
• eclipse-ee4j/glassfish
• spring-projects/spring-ai
• quarkusio/quarkus
• jreleaser/jreleaser

Best for: NLP Engineer, Software Engineer, AI Engineer, Machine Learning Engineer

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Editorial summary, takeaway, and curation by AIssential. Original article published by InfoQ.