Is it possible to receive a Java update before its release?

Question

Java 7 Update 25 just released today and causes some functionality of the framework that my company develops on to fail. This has been happening for the past year with most of the Java updates. It would be nice if Oracle had some sort of developer agreement that allows companies to test the new update before its release that way the company has time to prepare to tackle any problems and inform their customers to be prepared.

If I had known these issues beforehand, I would not have updated to Java 7 Update 25 and would have informed my customers to wait until a patch is created to update. (Telling them to not update is way easier than having our support department explain how to access the Oracle JAVA archive and create a free Oracle login to access the installer.)

So my question is: Does anyone know of a way to receive a copy of new Java updates before its official release?

Answer 1

Oracle makes some new versions of Java available before official release under Java Early Access program.

Answer 2

You can usually get the next major release of Java through the early access program but I don't remember seeing early access to patch releases since they are normally fixing security issues and bugs rather than changing the API.

This is a two part problem. The first step is to better manage your customers and explain to them that updating the JVM without first checking with you may cause problems (I'd love it if our customers would update their VM so think yourself lucky).

The second step is to fix your framework so that it isn't doing whatever's causing so many breakages. I'm hard pushed to think of a time when any of our code has stopped working because of a patch release. I wonder if you are using any undocumented API which is just asking for trouble.