A few weeks ago when Mark Reinhold announced that there were two possible plans for getting Java7 out the door, most people seemed to be behind the Plan B implementation, which meant we'd get a lighter version of Java7 earlier, rather than wait for all the features. Mark has recently posted details on his blog about what is actually to be included in Java7, and in the subsequent Java 8 release.

 

Java SE 7 — Mid 2011

• JSR 292: Support for Dynamically-Typed Languages (“InvokeDynamic”)
• JSR TBD: Small Language Enhancements (Project Coin)
• Upgrade Class-Loader Architecture
• Method to Close a URLClassLoader
• Concurrency and Collections Updates (including the Fork/Join Framework)
• Unicode 6.0
• Locale Enhancements (IETF BCP 47 & UTR 35)
• JSR 203: More New I/O APIs (“NIO 2”)
• TLS 1.2
• Elliptic-Curve Cryptography (ECC)
• JDBC 4.1
• Translucent & Shaped Windows
• Heavyweight/Lightweight Component Mixing
• Swing: Nimbus Look-and-Feel
• Swing: JLayer Component
• Update the XML Stack (JAXP, JAXB, & JAX-WS)

This makes Java 7 a very appealling release, while Java 8 will include some of the big ticket items:

 

Java SE 8 — Late 2012

• JSR 294: Language and VM Support for Modular Programming
• JSR TBD: Platform Modularization
• JSR TBD: Lambda Expressions, Default Methods, & Bulk Data Operations (Project Lambda)
• JSR 308: Annotations on Java Types
• JSR TBD: More Small Language Enhancements (Project Coin part 2)

The umbrella JSRs for both Java 7 and Java 8 have yet to be finalised, but this list gives a good indication about what we can expect from Java in the next few years.