Looking for OpenJDK for Windows?

If you're looking for a Windows build of OpenJDK, you will be happy to know that several organizations provide pre-built versions of OpenJDK for Windows:

• Azul - https://www.azul.com/downloads/zulu/zulu-windows/
• Red Hat - https://developers.redhat.com/products/openjdk/overview/

As always, you should read the terms and conditions to see if these binary distributions are right for your use case.

Or, you could build it yourself.

Upgrading Java - TL;DR : Stick with OpenJDK LTS versions

With the new, faster release cycle of Java there is a lot of confusion about when to upgrade.   Upgrading Java is non-trivial for a large system, so it needs to be thought through carefully - you have to think about the IDE, all your tools, and all the dependencies.

This awesome blog post covers a lot of the details.

Here's another awesome post about upgrading to Java 11

However, if you are using the Spring Framework, this decision is made simpler: Spring is only officially supporting LTS releases.   I think this makes a lot of sense.  For example: Spring Boot 2.1 Released - Java 11 Support

In my day job, the Spring Boot apps lean heavily on Spring's dependencies, so that we can leverage all the testing done by the Spring community.   Yes, that means working with something that's not the absolute bleeding edge, but using bleeding edge stuff is not the goal for us.  The goal is to produce applications that delight our users and add value to the business.