The Apache Jakarta Project has released POI 3.5, an open source Java library "for reading and writing Microsoft Office file formats, such as Excel, PowerPoint, Visio and Word." Version 3.5 adds support for the new OOXML formats introduced in Office 2007.
The Eclipse Project has released Eclipse 3.5.1 Galileo, an open source integrated development environment for Java. (Other languages such as C++ are supported, but not especially well. I'll have to try the new PHP and XSLT support.) This is a bug fix release.
The Apache Jakarta Commons Team has released version 1.5.3 of their open source Commons Pool object pooling API. This is a bug fix release.
The Eclipse Project has posted the second "milestone" of Eclipse 3.6 Helios. Nothing major in 3.6 so far; just some very minor improvements most folks will never notice like NTLMv2 proxy support and hideable fast view bars. Extract method can now handle continue statements.
Google has released the Android Development Kit 1.6. According to Xavier Ducrohet:
Android 1.6, which is based on the donut branch from the Android Open Source Project, introduces a number of new features and technologies. With support for CDMA and additional screen sizes, your apps can be deployed on even more mobile networks and devices. You will have access to new technologies, including framework-level support for additional screen resolutions, like QVGA and WVGA, new telephony APIs to support CDMA, gesture APIs, a text-to-speech engine, and the ability to integrate with Quick Search Box. What's new in Android 1.6 provides a more complete overview of this platform update.
The Android 1.6 SDK requires a new version of Android Development Tools (ADT). The SDK also includes a new tool that enables you to download updates and additional components, such as new add-ons or platforms.
You can expect to see devices running Android 1.6 as early as October. As with previous platform updates, applications written for older versions of Android will continue to run on devices with Android 1.6.
Martin Odersky has released Scala 2.7.6, a general purpose programming language mixes object-oriented and functional features. It is hosted on top of the Java virtual machine. According to Antonio Cunei, 2.7.6 fixes "one rare issue that could result in a 'malformed Scala signature' message. No other fixes or changes are included; if you have never encountered the message above, you will not notice any difference by upgrading. "
Bill Pugh of the University of Maryland has released FindBugs 1.3.9, an automated open source tool for finding potential bugs in Java code. New bug detectors in this release include:
I tested this release out on XOM. It didn't find any real bugs, but it did point out one place where XOM should probably be making a null-check a little earlier than it does, enabling it to short-circuit a common path rather than waiting for an exception to bubble up and be caught. Further investigation along that code path has made me start to rethink how relative URLs are handled.
Apple has released Java Update 5 for Mac OS X 10.5 to address assorted security vulnerabilities. Essentially this upgrades Java 1.6.0_13 to 1.6.0_15, Java 1.5.0_19 to 1.5.0_20, Java 1.4.2_21 ton 1.4.2_22, and fixes an apparently Mac-specific bug in Java Web Start command launcher. Check Software Update to download.
Real life is interfering with blogging lately. The last couple of weeks have been occupied with moving to New York, and starting work with a new team. At home, my life is still in boxes. I just got my monitor and keyboard set up today. My stove still isn't working. It will probably be late September before I resume a more regular update schedule here. Despite the temporary hiatus, getting back to Brooklyn should be a long term increase in my productivity if for no other reason than that my Brooklyn office is so much better than the loft I had in Irvine. (Never again will I rent an apartment with thick, wall-to-wall carpet in every room.)