AEM 6.5 and Java 17

AEM 6.5.x, released in Apr 2019, is the widely adopted AEM release ever by on premise and managed services customers. It supports JRE versions 8 & 11, but there is a growing demand for Java 17 support from AEM customer community, as well as a need to address known vulnerabilities in third party libraries that require Java 17 support.

The session will delve into the key motivations behind introducing Java 17 support for AEM 6.5 customer base and the unique technical challenges it presents. It would highlight the distinctions/changes between AEM 6.5 as it exists today and the need for a new AEM release adding support for Java 17 and addressing the known vulnerabilities. How an existing AEM 6.5 customer should prepare for this upgrade and what are the potential tools/utilities can become handy in this upgrade will also be covered in the session.

Additionally, the discussion will cover backward-incompatible changes, API changes and respective recommendations which developers can follow to make it a smooth exercise of upgrade. Finally, there will be a list shared of already deprecated/EoL features which Adobe plans not to support further while moving to Java 17.

Why Java 17 and not the current LTS? 21 came out nore than a year ago, and would give you 2 more years of active support.
(see answer in talk video)

Simon

What about AEMaaCS?

Robert Munteanu

Cloud Service needs a bit more attention because we push maintenance updates to all environments at the same time. Not everyone will be ready for Java 21 at the same time so we are working a safe rollout approach. Feel free to ask me directly if you want more details.

Will this extend compatibility to any flavour of ARM64 or will it stay with x86? Binary modules in AEM like XMP writeback are the only thing that would be preventing that - and with 17 they need to change.
(see answer in talk video)

Yegor Kozlov

Will 6.5.2025 continue to use the Rhino javascript engine?

(see answer in talk video)
When will AMS have it available as an approved „block version”? Being available to on-premise customers in 6.6 („6.5 2025”) does not mean that AMS would support it at the same time - and for that matter, neither does Cloud Manager (you need to be able to build using native 17).
(see answer in talk video)