While not yet targeted for any particular Java release, Project Panama offers some hope for those who use, or hope to use, third-party, native libraries. Currently, the primary way of exposing native libraries (that is, OS-specific libraries written in, say, C or C++) to the JVM is via the Java Native Interface (JNI). The problem with JNI, or at least one of them, is that it requires that every Java programmer who wants to expose a native library to the JVM also become a C programmer, which means not only the C language itself, but also the related build tools for each supported platform.
Project Panama hopes to ameliorate that issue by offering the Java developer a new means of exposing native libraries without needing a deep ...
