Help me understand why javac will not compile the following com.apple.eawt snipet

[Jonathan Gibbons]

David,

You may have fallen victim to the mechanism used in javac to "hide" JDK 
internal classes in rt.jar from users who ought not to be using them.  
javac uses a "symbol file" to determine what symbols in rt.jar are 
available for use. To disable this feature, use the hidden option 
-XDignore.symbol.file=true

-- Jon


On 09/12/2011 05:12 PM, David Durrence wrote:
> I am porting over a test to jtreg that uses com.apple.eawt.   Javac complains about not finding the symbol (com.apple.eawt) in the import statement (and the other invocations of this class).
>
> We verified that the class is present in ../1.7.0.jdk/Contents/Home/jre/lib/rt.jar.
>
> If I copy rt. jar into the source directory and invoke javac using:  javac -Xbootclasspath/p:rt. jar Test.java, the source file compiles with no problems.  If I use Java SE 6 I do not need to use the -X option.
>
> Is this a feature or a bug?  What is going on?
>
>
> // Test.java source
>
> import com.apple.eawt.Application;
>
> public class Test {
> 	public static void main (String[] args) {
> 		Application a = Application.getApplication();
> 	}
> }
>
> javaqa7:EAWT ddurrence$ java -version
> openjdk version "1.7.0-internal"
> OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0-internal-javabuild_2011_09_12_03_02-b00)
> OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 21.0-b17, mixed mode)
> javaqa7:EAWT ddurrence$ javac Test.java
> Test.java:1: error: package com.apple.eawt does not exist
> import com.apple.eawt.Application;
>                       ^
> Test.java:5: error: cannot find symbol
> 		Application a = Application.getApplication();
> 		^
>    symbol:   class Application
>    location: class Test
> Test.java:5: error: cannot find symbol
> 		Application a = Application.getApplication();
> 		                ^
>    symbol:   variable Application
>    location: class Test
> 3 errors
> javaqa7:EAWT ddurrence$ cp /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.7.0.jdk/Contents/Home/jre/lib/rt.jar .
> javaqa7:EAWT ddurrence$ javac -Xbootclasspath/p:rt.jar Test.java
> javaqa7:EAWT ddurrence$
>
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~
> David Durrence
> 974-6202
>
>
>