The Java language is mostly Object based, however the original designers chose to include eight primitive types - boolean, byte, char, double, float, int, long and short. Commons Primitives provides a library of collections and utilities specially designed for use with primitive types.
JDK 1.5 added auto-boxing to simplify working with primitive types. This is simply a mechanism of automatically converting a primitive to an Object and vice versa, an operation with potentially large memory and performance issues. Commons Primitives offers collections that hold the primitive type directly, and as a result they are usually smaller, faster and easier to work with than their purely Object based alternatives.
A getting started user guide is available, along with a FAQ. Also online are various project reports.
The JavaDoc API documents are available online:
The subversion repository can be browsed.
The latest version is v1.0, released 5 November 2003. -
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The latest daily build is also available.
The commons mailing lists act as the main support forum. The user list is suitable for most library usage queries. The dev list is intended for the development discussion. Please remember that the lists are shared between all commons components, so prefix your email by [primitives].
Issues may be reported via ASF Jira.