Java 7 for Mac OSX

[Scott Kovatch]

On Feb 22, 2012, at 11:14 AM, Mike Swingler wrote:

> On Feb 22, 2012, at 10:50 AM, Scott Kovatch wrote:
> 
>> On Feb 22, 2012, at 9:55 AM, Johannes Schindelin wrote:
>> 
>>> Hi,
>>> 
>>> On Tue, 21 Feb 2012, Gregg Wonderly wrote:
>>> 
>>>> [... explains how few problems with compatibility he had over the
>>>> years...]
>>> 
>>> Me, too, I had few problems. The only compatibility issue I regularly
>>> encounter is the problem with the different path and directory separators
>>> on Windows (I frequently fix my and other people's code in that respect).
>>> 
>>> It is really unfortunate, but a truth in this life, that you only hear
>>> back from users when things break.
>>> 
>>> So let me use this opportunity to thank all the Java developers reading
>>> this: thank you for making it possible to ship just .jar files and having
>>> things Just Work with a single, well-maintained, system-wide JRE.
>> 
>> This will continue to work with Java 7, but not in the 7u4 timeframe. For 7u6 we plan to release a Java runtime for end users that will support Java applets, Java Web Start, and double-clickable JAR files. Users will not be required to install a full JDK to run Java applications.
>> 
>> Note that with 7u4 you will still be able to execute 'java -jar <jarfile>' from a Terminal window and it will just work, but double-clicking it from the Finder will use Apple's Java 6.
> 
> Actually: double-clicking from the Finder does what /usr/bin/java -jar <jarfile> does - it picks the highest JVM specified in Java Preferences. Today.

That's right -- I had forgotten that the Jar Launcher will find Java 7 now.

> We are considering for the future, that we'll re-direct double-click jars to the JRE inside of the Oracle Java applet plug-in, if it's present. This raises a minor concern that this will only be a JRE and not a full JDK, but I'm not particularly concerned about that, since you'll encounter the exact same issue on any other platform that supports double-click .jars. If the Oracle applet plug-in is not installed, we fall back to the /usr/bin path.

I think this is the right approach, and it's consistent with what we want to happen with Web Start and applets. The Oracle Java plug-in and its underlying runtime should be the first thing that's used for all launch cases that expect to use a shared runtime.

-- Scott