Milestones
The JDK 7 development schedule is divided into a sequence of milestone cycles, each five to nine builds in length, with builds occuring roughly once each week. There will be no formal beta or early-access releases, as in the past. Major features and other potentially-destabilizing changes will targeted for integration early in a specific milestone.
Here is the current high-level milestone schedule, with the features targeted to each cycle:
The last scheduled milestone cycle will be followed by a test and stabilization period of indeterminate length, after which the final release will be declared.
Some features have been approved for the release but are not yet targeted to a specific milestone. When they are targeted then they'll be added to the above table.