Java’s revived Detroit project, to enable joint usage of Java with Python or JavaScript, is slated to soon become an official project within the OpenJDK community.
Oracle officials plan to highlight Detroit’s status at JavaOne on March 17. “The main benefit [of Detroit] is it allows you to combine industry-leading Java and JavaScript or Java and Python for places where you want to be able to use both of those technologies together,” said Oracle’s Georges Saab, senior vice president of the Java Platform Group, in a briefing on March 12. The goal of the project is to provide implementations of the javax.script API for JavaScript based on the Chrome V8 JavaScript engine and for Python based on CPython, according to the Detroit project page on openjdk.org.
Initially proposed in the 2018 timeframe as a mechanism for JavaScript to be used as an extension language for Java, the project later fizzled when losing sponsorship. But interest in it recently has been revived. The plan is to address Java ecosystem requirements to call other languages, with scripting for business logic and easy access to AI libraries in other languages. While the plan initially calls for Java and Python support, other languages are slated to be added over time. The Java FFM (Foreign Function & Memory) API is expected to be leveraged in the project. Other goals of the project include:
- Improving application security by isolating Java and native heap executions.
- Simplifying access to JS/Python libraries until equivalent Java libraries are made.
- Delivery of full JS/Python compatibility by leveraging the V8 and CPython runtimes. Also, maintenance cost is to be reduced by harnessing the V8 and CPython ecosystem.
- Leveraging existing investments in performance optimizations for the JS and Python languages.
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