<p><strong>TLDR:</strong> Google shipped ADK for Java 1.0 this week, giving JVM developers a production-ready framework for building multi-agent AI systems. JDK 25 landed two Project Leyden JEPs that together cut startup time without touching application code. TornadoVM 4.0 went GA with Apple Silicon support and CUDA graph operations. The Java ecosystem also got a new Parquet parser, a Helidon release aligned to the OpenJDK cadence, and Oracle’s Java Verified Portfolio quietly made JavaFX an easier sell to enterprise procurement.</p>
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<h2>Google ADK for Java 1.0 is out</h2>
<p>Google’s Agent Development Kit for Java hit 1.0 this week. The release adds a plugin abstraction for cross-cutting concerns like logging and guardrails, event compaction to prevent context rot in long-running sessions, a <code>ToolConfirmation</code> mechanism for human-in-the-loop checkpoints, and native A2A protocol support for interoperating with agents built in other languages. Session state and memory can now be backed by Firestore or Vertex AI. The reference demo (Comic Trip, built on Quarkus) shows the pieces working together: grounding tools, multi-agent coordination, and the new top-level <code>App</code> abstraction that groups agents and services into a single deployable unit.</p>
<h2>JDK 25 AOT cache gets two new JEPs</h2>
<p>JEP 514 collapses AOT cache creation from a two-step process into a single <code>-XX:AOTCacheOutput</code> flag, though it still runs two subprocesses internally — worth knowing because peak heap usage can double during cache generation. JEP 515 extends the cache to store JIT profiles collected during a training run, so the compiler can emit optimized native code immediately at startup rather than waiting for warmup. Both features are automatic and require no application code changes. A Spring Boot talk from this week showed a 4x startup improvement on Pet Clinic (3 seconds down to 750ms) by combining these with Spring AOT, which is a meaningful number for teams running many small services.</p>
<h2>TornadoVM 4.0 GA</h2>
<p>TornadoVM 4.0 is out with Apple Silicon/Metal support and CUDA graph operations. The project has been running in production at the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission, where it achieves over 500x speedup on specific algorithms. The 1.0 release of GraalVM Native Build Tools also landed this week, alongside EclipseLink 5.0 GA and milestone 4 releases of Spring Boot, Spring Modulith, and Spring AI.</p>
<h2>Oracle’s Java Verified Portfolio and what it actually changes</h2>
<p>Oracle announced the Java Verified Portfolio at JavaOne 2026, which includes commercial support for JavaFX across JDK 17, 21, 25, 26, and future LTS releases. For teams already using JavaFX, not much changes day-to-day — Gluon and the OpenJFX community have kept it alive since Oracle dropped it from the JDK in 2017. What does change is the procurement conversation: the “who is commercially accountable?” objection is now easier to answer. Helidon 4.4.0 also shipped this week, with the project committing to align its versioning with the OpenJDK six-month cadence (Helidon 27 when JDK 27 ships in September 2026).</p>
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<h2>Also notable</h2>
<ul>
<li><strong>Hardwood 1.0.0.Beta1</strong> — A new Java-based Apache Parquet parser with minimal dependencies, S3 backend support using Java’s built-in HTTP client with a custom SigV4 implementation, predicate push-down, and Avro bindings; 1.0 final expected within weeks.</li>
<li><strong>Pi4J joins Commonhaus Foundation</strong> — The Java GPIO library for Raspberry Pi transferred infrastructure ownership to Commonhaus (which also hosts Jackson, Hibernate, and Micronaut) to secure long-term sustainability; Pi4J V4 introduces an FFM API plugin to replace JNI.</li>
<li><strong>JEP 528 (candidate)</strong> — Proposes extending <code>jcmd</code> to work on core dumps from crashed JVMs, not just live ones; supports 26 diagnostic commands post-mortem with no JDK version lock-in between the crashed and analyzing JDK.</li>
<li><strong>trivago GraalVM Native Image migration</strong> — Migrating their GraphQL Gateway from JVM to native image reduced one service from 43 to 12 replicas and CPU from 15 to 5 cores; 14 services migrated, 34 remaining, with PGO evaluation underway.</li>
<li><strong>SolarWinds Web Help Desk pre-auth RCE chain</strong> — Watchtowr found three new vulns (CVE-2025-40552, CVE-2025-40553, CVE-2025-40554) including a deserialization RCE via jabsorb and a bypass of SolarWinds’ own patch using a <code>\x</code> hex escape that Jackson ignores but the legacy JSONObject parser decodes.</li>
<li><strong>Kotlin 2.3 explicit backing fields</strong> — Experimental feature that replaces the private underscore-prefixed mutable property pattern with a single <code>field</code> keyword declaration; IntelliJ IDEA will auto-convert existing backing properties.</li>
<li><strong>Context Augmented Generation (CAG) pattern</strong> — Architectural refinement of RAG that adds a Spring Boot context manager layer for user identity, session state, and policy checks before hitting the retrieval pipeline; useful for enterprise governance requirements.</li>
<li><strong>Virtual Threads vs. Coroutines in 2026</strong> — A Codemotion Madrid talk preview from JetBrains covers how Java’s Virtual Threads, Scoped Values, and Structured Concurrency APIs compare to Kotlin coroutines after Java 21.</li>
<li><strong>Timefold mixed planning variables</strong> — Timefold Solver now supports mixing <code>@PlanningVariable</code> and <code>@PlanningListVariable</code> on the same solution, covering scheduling problems where a single variable type doesn’t fit.</li>
<li><strong>Kotlin 2.3.20 released</strong> — Bug fixes, performance improvements, and small enhancements across the ecosystem.</li>
</ul>


Spring Boot, JVM updates, and Java ecosystem news.

Java Digest

Google's Agent Development Kit for Java reached 1.0, bringing production-ready multi-agent AI support to JVM developers with plugin abstractions, event compaction, human-in-the-loop checkpoints, and A2A protocol support. JDK 25 gained two Project Leyden JEPs (514 and 515) that streamline AOT cache creation and store JIT profiles for faster startup — a Spring Boot demo showed 4x improvement. TornadoVM 4.0 went GA with Apple Silicon and CUDA graph support. Oracle's Java Verified Portfolio adds commercial backing for JavaFX. Other notable items include Helidon 4.4.0 aligning to OpenJDK cadence, a new Parquet parser (Hardwood), Pi4J joining Commonhaus Foundation, a trivago GraalVM Native Image migration case study, Kotlin 2.3 explicit backing fields, and new SolarWinds deserialization RCE vulnerabilities.

Google ADK for Java hits 1.0, JDK 25 gets serious about startup