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

[Mike Swingler]

On Jul 5, 2013, at 5:14 AM, Christopher Brown <christopherbrown06 at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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 10.9), the Apple Java 6 will be withdrawn.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).

We do plan to support the /usr/libexec/java_home tool in it's current form for the foreseeable future.

Regards,
Mike Swingler
Apple Inc.