The JDK 7 Developer Preview (a.k.a. Milestone 12) builds are now available for download.

This milestone is intended for broad testing by developers, deployers, and end users. We’ve run all tests on all supported platforms and haven’t found any glaring issues. We’ve also fixed 456 bugs since reaching the Feature-Complete milestone back in January.

If you’ve been watching JDK 7 development from the sidelines then now is a great time to download a build and take it for a spin. See if your favorite project still compiles and runs, see if it runs any faster than before, or try out one of the many new features.

Let us know what you think The sooner, the better. We’ll do our best to read, evaluate, and act on all feedback received in the forums or via the usual bug-reporting channel between now and the end of March. After that we’ll gradually ramp down the rate of change in order to stabilize the code, so bugs reported later on might not get fixed in time for the initial release.