Prior to Java 9, new versions of Java were released every three years (on average). The release timeline changed with Java 9, with the adoption of a six-month release cadence. Java 10 was released just six months after the release of Java 9. We already covered the major features of Java 10 in the first three chapters; Chapter 1, Type Inference, Chapter 2, AppCDS, and Chapter 3, Garbage Collector Optimizations.

In this chapter, we'll cover the remaining additions or updates to Java 10, most of which are related to changes in the JDK or its implementation. We'll also cover a few additions and modifications to the Java API.

In this chapter, we'll cover the following topics:

• Thread-local handshakes
• Time-based release versioning
• Consolidating the JDK forest into a single repository
• Heap allocation on alternative memory devices
• Additional Unicode language-tag extensions
• Root certificates
• The experimental Java-based JIT compiler
• Removal of the Native-Header Generation Tool