What Is Alibaba Dragonwell? An OpenJDK LTS Distribution for Enterprise Java

On March 21 at the Alibaba Cloud Summit in Beijing, Alibaba announced the open‑source OpenJDK LTS distribution Alibaba Dragonwell, the only Chinese representative on the Java Community Process executive committee and one of the few OpenJDK customizers outside Oracle.

Alibaba Dragonwell is a free OpenJDK distribution that provides long‑term support, performance enhancements and security fixes. It currently supports x86‑64/Linux and aims to improve stability, efficiency and performance for large‑scale data‑center Java deployments while remaining fully compatible with Java SE.

Alibaba Dragonwell 8 preview corresponds to OpenJDK 8. The open‑source release gives Java developers a new choice, and Alibaba Cloud will ship LTS versions (Java 8 and Java 11) with its VM images for free to cloud customers.

Advantages inherited from AJDK

Ported Java Flight Recorder from upstream Java 11, enabling detailed profiling with JFR and Java Mission Control.

Integrated JWarmup technology, which pre‑compiles Java code based on traffic scheduling, reducing warm‑up latency and CPU load.

Improved GC diagnostics and serviceability; see the Alibaba Dragonwell 8 User Guide.

Roadmap

Each quarterly release will include upstream security/critical bug fixes, Alibaba‑customised features and bug fixes, and back‑ported functionality for Java 8‑plus based on Alibaba’s engineering practice. Alibaba plans to open‑source more AJDK innovations and expects to release Alibaba Dragonwell 11 by the end of 2019.

FAQ

Q1: Why is it called “Dragonwell”? “Dragonwell” (龙井) refers to Chinese tea culture and the famous West Lake area of Hangzhou, Alibaba’s headquarters; “well” suggests a shared water source for developers.

Q2: Is Alibaba Dragonwell the same as internal AJDK? Dragonwell is the open‑source version of AJDK and inherits its technology, but the current open‑source release does not include all AJDK features such as multi‑tenant, Wisp coroutines, or ZenGC.

Q3: What is the relationship with OpenJDK? Dragonwell is a downstream of OpenJDK; each release synchronises with upstream updates and undergoes Alibaba’s large‑scale testing. Alibaba also contributes AJDK innovations back to the OpenJDK community.

Q4: How to view Java version upgrades and the Oracle vs OpenJDK relationship? Java 8 remains the most widely used version; many developers stay with it due to stability and trust. While migration to newer OpenJDK versions is gradual, the growing involvement of major tech companies will make OpenJDK a robust public resource.