jdk7u-dev installer doesn't work on 10.6.8

[Mike Swingler]

On Feb 16, 2012, at 4:29 PM, Hal Perkins wrote:

> For several months the OS X Java 7 previews have been distributed as files
> that could be dragged to the JavaVirtualMachines folder.  These worked fine
> on OS X 10.6 and 10.7, and the preview page (
> http://jdk7.java.net/macportpreview/) says that the code is still tested on
> both systems.  Elsewhere it says the Java 7 port is not expected to use any
> 10.7-only APIs.  However the last two preview releases have been packaged
> as installer files that require 10.7.  They won't launch on 10.6.8.
> 
> Unless there is now something in the code that actually requires 10.7,
> please fix the installer so it works on 10.6.x as well, or else revert back
> to the previous packaging (which seemed fine from the end-user view).
> There are a lot of us out here (as well as a lot of students) who would
> like to take advantage of Java 7 but for various reasons can't upgrade yet
> from 10.6.  Let's not repeat the situation we had with Java 5 and 6 where
> an OS upgrade was forced on users to use the latest version of Java on Macs
> even though the code worked fine on the previous OS X releases that were
> still widely installed at the time.

I'd agree. I understand there may be reasons you need an installer for the Java applet plug-in to install a .prefpane along with the .plugin, but the JDK itself should still be drag-installable.

Unless you *need* to run some sort of preflight/postflight scripts, why bother with an installer?

Regards,
Mike Swingler
Apple Inc.