Sun has posted the first beta (after a couple of alphas) of the NetBeans Integrated Development Environment (IDE) 4.1. This early access release is available for Windows, Linux, and Solaris. New features in version 4.1 focus on Enterprise JavaBeans and Web Services. Beta 1 adds the ability to import projects from Eclipse. Final release is planned for April, 2005. Java 1.4.2 or later is required.
Steve Roy has released MRJ Adapter 1.0.9, an open source library that implements a unified API for developers to access Mac specific functionality built into the various versions of the Macintosh Runtime for Java (MRJ). MRJ Adapter enables developers to add Mac specific functionality to their applications without compromising the cross-platform nature of their application. MRJ Adapter also "incorporates many little tricks known only to seasoned Mac Java programmers, such as how to bring up a file dialog to pick a folder, or how to set up a menu bar when no frame is opened, which is a normal state for a Mac application that isn't natively supported by Java." The main change in 1.0.9 is that it is now published under the Artistic License rather than the LGPL. 1.0.9 also fixes bugs and adds explicit support for the the Quaqua Look and Feel.
Etienne Gagnon has released version 1.1.10 of SableVM, a Java bytecode interpreter (that is, a virtual machine) written in C. "SableVM requires an ANSI/ISO C compiler (but preferably GCC) and a POSIX platform. It requires a strong memory model (sequential consistency) on multiprocessor systems." SableVM is available for GNU/Linux, Solaris, and FreeBSD. Version 1.1.10 improves JNI support, upgrades GNU Classpath to 0.14, implements basic JDK_HOME support, and fixes various bugs. SableVM is published under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL). The developers claim it's written in portable C, but in my experience it's unlikley to be able to be built on anything except the latest and greatest Linux and possibly BSD. It will not build on Mac OS X or older versions of Linux. :-(