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With regard to the likely feature backports, there are several possibilities, in particular the Java Flight Recorder (JFR). There is a tree http://hg.openjdk.java.net/jdk8u/jdk8u-jfr-incubator/ for this work. Patches to this tree must be approved in ththe usual way, with an RFR email to the jdk8u-dev mailing list.
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