Gluon  has announced the  Gluon VM  project bringing Java 9 support to mobile developers and unlocking the availability of all OpenJDK APIs.  As a full OpenJDK implementation, the company says their Gluon VM will form the basis for future releases of  Gluon mobile , and will allow enterprise developers to benefit from the latest developments in Java 8 and Java 9. Launched 18 months ago, the Gluon mobile offering provides plugins for the main Java IDEs, for building Java applications for Android and iOS platforms using a single code base. According to company co-founder John Vos, Gluon Mobile abstracts out the underlying hardware, providing a common API for accessing hardware and building dynamic user interfaces. In order to execute Java code on mobile devices the device must be able to interpret Java bytecode, and therein lies the rub. Until now Gluon Mobile deployments on Android devices would ...

Java modules, in the works for years and now set to debut in 2016, will involve improvements to the Java Packager, to reduce the size of the Java Runtime Environment. In a JDK Enhancement Proposal (JEP) floated this week on an Internet bulletin board, the Java Packager tool could be integrated with features from the  Project Jigsaw  modularization plan. Java Packager is used to compile, package, and deploy Java applications from the command line. “The Java Packager has always generated huge binaries when it is asked to bundle a runtime as part of its packaging due to the size of the JRE, which for some distributions is on the order of 100MB,” the proposal states. “Jigsaw will expose tools and techniques that can reduce the size of the JRE we need to package.” The proposal stipulates that, for the most part, packager workflow will remain as is. But tools from Jigsaw will be added and replace some steps. The packager will only create applications using the JDK 9 ...