Java 1.6.0_51 regressions, somewhere we can download an alternative ?

[Erik Vanherck]

Hi Mike,

1. yes the blockers which prevent us from using Java 7/8 (as is available atm are) on OS X
- http://bugs.sun.com/view_bug.do?bug_id=7154778 and its sibling https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=374199
- http://bugs.sun.com/view_bug.do?bug_id=8011686
- http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=8003169
- http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=8005928
- http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=8004821
- http://bugs.sun.com/view_bug.do?bug_id=8006941
There are others but they are just minor annoyances, nothing major. And basically only the first one is a big issue.

All of these should be fixed in _40. We have back ported the SWT changes required for the first one and initial testing looked good but we are still experiencing deadlocks in some cases deep in AWT when disconnecting external screens and using mutiple awt frames in the same app. They are hard to reproduce but we are in the process of figuring out if we can work around them or we need to log it as an issue.

2. The blocker for java 6 was reported at Oracle since it affects both Apple 1.6.0_51 and 1.7.0_25 as its clear from the traces that it originates in Oracle maintained code. It's the entire AppContext mess thats now being called from non-GUI code.
http://bugs.sun.com/view_bug.do?bug_id=8019496
If you want I can refile it in the Apple database as well.

Note that _40 is a good candidate for us to move to (if we can figure out the deadlock issue), but the EA builds do not yet contain the fixes from _51 and _25 which will cause the exact same issues and possible break that one as well.

The AppContext issue is most likely the same as other threads I've seen passing about GWT plugins no longer working in Eclipse and other non-gui apps locking up.

Thanks for the link to the downloads, I can swear I looked there before and came up with empty searches. Must be user not being awake enough error probably :)

And yes I agree, this is in no means meant for anyone outside. Installing old java releases is a bad idea. We just have a couple of devs which were completely locked out of their work. We explicitly disable java in browsers since we don't do any applet or webstart development.

Will try the moving dirs arround as the eclipse executables use JNI and we can't point them to the Apple 1.6 jvmlib.dnylib as it doesn't contain the JNI_CreateJava method so it still ends up going to the platform default one provided by the JavaVM Framework.

On 03 Jul 2013, at 18:13, Mike Swingler <swingler at apple.com<mailto:swingler at apple.com>> wrote:

On Jul 3, 2013, at 5:18 AM, Erik Vanherck <Erik.Vanherck at inventivegroup.com<mailto:Erik.Vanherck at inventivegroup.com>> wrote:

Hi,

Just wondering since some of us are really completly stuck (oracle java 1.7 isn't mature enough yet and Java 1.6 is broken) any place we can get an older release ?

Due to the regressions caused by _51 (not the swing issue which has been hotfixed but others http://bugs.sun.com/view_bug.do?bug_id=8019496), is there any place we can still download a dmg for an older Apple java release ? It doesn't need to be a jre which plugs in a browsers. It's simply a stop gap to help out all the folks with the desktop apps having issues. A JDK would be fine for instance.

1. Are there bugs filed at <http://bugs.sun.com<http://bugs.sun.com/>> for the issues that are blocking you from adopting Java 7/8? What are the bug numbers?
2. Are there bugs filed at <http://bugreporter.apple.com<http://bugreporter.apple.com/>> for the regressions in Java SE 6? What are the bug numbers?

If we know what the specific issues are, and we have test cases or a copy of your application that can reproduce them, we can ensure that they get fixed for everyone, instead of telling people how to install old software and put their machine into an unsupported state.

You can download the Java Developer packages for older releases at: <https://developer.apple.com/downloads/index.action?name=Java%20Developer>. This will install a JDK in /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines, which you can manually request on the command-line for testing/regressing issues. This, by itself, is supported.

If you need to disable the internal system JVM at /System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines and rely on one of the Developer JDKs, please move the 1.6.0.jdk aside into a "disabled" directory, so that you can swap it back in when you need to restore your system or do quick comparison testing. This configuration is not supported, but it is unlikely to cause serious problems. This will make your web browsing experience vulnerable if you are on Snow Leopard, or if you have specifically re-enabled the Java SE 6 applet plug-in and Web Start on Lion or Mountain Lion. Please use the Oracle Java 7 applet plug-in, if at all possible.

Other modifications to the system JavaVM.framework or other system frameworks are very unsupported, and are unlikely to actually have the effect you intend.

Regards,
Mike Swingler
Apple Inc.



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