The release of Java 9 has been postponed by six months. According to the new schedule the next update of the Java Development Kit (JDK) will be feature complete on May 26, 2016, with general availability slated for March 23, 2017.
Chief Java Architect Mark Reinhold explained the reason for the delay in an email. ?In the current JDK 9 schedule, the Feature Complete milestone is set for 10 December, less than two weeks from today, but Jigsaw needs more time,? he wrote. ?The JSR 376 EG has not yet published an Early Draft Review specification, the volume of interest and the high quality of the feedback received over the last two months suggests that there will be much more to come, and we want to ensure that the maintainers of the essential build tools and IDEs have adequate time to design and implement good support for modular development.?
