Java Weekly and Ecosystem Updates: Spring, IntelliJ, Quarkus, and More
Spring Boot 4 launches with declarative interface clients, API versioning, and enhanced security. Spring Security 7 adds multi-factor authentication, passkeys, and OAuth Identity Provider support. Spring AI expands with MCP integration and agentic frameworks, while Spring gRPC reaches General Availability. Java improvements include script execution, virtual threads, GraalVM native images, and Project Leyden AOT caches offering 75%+ startup time improvements. Kotlin developers gain JSpecify-based null-safety in Spring Boot 4. Additional updates include IntelliJ IDEA debugging enhancements, Spring Vault 4.1.0 interfaces, JDK 26 field immutability enforcement, and releases for Quarkus, Infinispan, and Gradle.