Java's Project Valhalla finally lands a preview in JDK 28

**TL;DR:** Java's Project Valhalla finally lands a preview in JDK 28

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Oracle software engineer Lois Foltan has confirmed that Java Enhancement Proposal 401 for Value Classes and Objects – part of Project Valhalla – will be integrated into the OpenJDK mainline early next month, targeting JDK 28. Previews of JEP 401 have so far been available only in early-access builds. The current JDK (Java Development Kit) is 26, with JDK 27 expected in September and JDK 28 in March 2027. The next long-term support version is likely to be JDK 29 in September 2027.

Foltan said it was an "extremely large change", such that other OpenJDK committers are asked to avoid large commits in order to help a successful integration. The pull request for the first preview of JEP 401 adds more than 197,000 lines of code in 1,816 changed files. Created in August 20222, JEP 401 tackle a longstanding Java limitation: aside from a small number of primitives including int, char, byte and double, all types in the language are reference types.

The JEP introduces "value objects" – class instances that lack object identity and are distinguished solely by the values of their fields. A few examples illustrate the problem JEP 401 is trying to solve. Java's LocalDate class stores date values,

Source: The Register

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