Paul Jensen: The upcoming JDK 6.0 (Mustang) release does not approach the magnitude of enhancements in JDK 5.0, but does offer several interesting updates. Among these updates is the incorporation of JSR 223 Scripting for the JavaTM Platform. Essentially, this introduces a standard framework to allow scripting language programs to be executed from and have access to the Java platform. It provides many of the capabilities of BSF (Bean Scripting Framework). As with BSF, JSR 223 provides a common interface for integration of a variety of scripting languages. The specification includes examples incorporating PHP and Javascript. Eventual support for a wide range of scripting languages (BeanShell, Jython, Ruby, etc) is expected.
Scripting support in Java has come a long way since I first wrote about it 1800 days (about five years) ago. I am glad that scripting support has finally come to the JDK proper.
On a completely different note, is it really almost JDK 6.0 time already? It feels like yesterday when JDK 5.0 was released. But it's been a year and four months now.