Sun Microsystems hopes to whet the appetite of developers for its tools with a preview program providing early access to its next Sun Studio suite.

The Sun Studio Express Program (http://developers.sun.com/prodtech/cc/downloads/express.jsp) is giving C, C++ and Fortran developers early access to features in future releases of Sun Studio while also taking feedback from partners and customers.

Sun has posted an August build of Studio to the Express web site that features compliers to optimize the performance of C, C++ and Fortran code on Linux, and a data race detection tool. According to Sun, the build sees greater integration between components, which include optimizing compliers, a multi-thread aware debugger, performance analysis tools and the NetBeans-based integrated development framework.

Sun, who has spent the best part of four years trying to tempt developers to use its tools and middleware en masse, claims 50,000 downloads of the current Sun Studio 11 in six months. The Express Program was created in response to this demand, Sun said.®

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