Packaging Java Applications targeting Apple Java 6 and Oracle Java 7+

[Christopher Brown]

Hello,

I have a question about on-going availability of the
/usr/libexec/java_home Mac OS X command.

I've been following the different threads about the different ways of
bundling a Java application as an ".app" with Mac OS X, using either
JavaApplicationStub (which I've done in the past) or using the
equivalent tool for Java 7 onwards.  It would seem that that implies
creating two variants of the application and hoping that the user
picks the right one.  The long-term recommended solution would appear
to be "use the Oracle", for obvious reasons.

However, given that on a new project, we're going to use SWT instead
of Swing, we've created an ".app" bundle that starts Java using an
embedded ".sh" script (and neither stub, which conveniently side-steps
needing to choose one stub or another, and avoids two versions).  It
relies on /usr/libexec/java_home and currently works fine.

I'm probably safe in assuming that at some point (OS X Mavericks /
10.9), the Apple Java 6 will be withdrawn.  However, it would be great
to have confirmation that the "java_home" command will continue to be
supported and provided (as opposed to going down some hacky script
that assumes paths, parses paths, and tries to sort them to pick the
best version).

Thanks in advance,
Christopher