Mailing Lists: Apple Mailing Lists

Image of Mac OS face in stamp
 
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: uninstalling a jdk/jre



Hi folks, interesting responses so far. I'd like to respond to a few points in general that I've seen.

* Buy a backup drive for making images of your current config - This is a novel approach, but honestly the first thought that pops up in my head is "Lemme get this straight, I need to go out and buy a mirroring drive to run a JDK? a J-D-K ? You're kidding right?" For purposes of general machine backup, fine, that makes perfect sense. Even for testing new versions of Mac OS, fine. But a JDK? wha? I can accept that a quick trip under the firehose makes my powerbook a "sad mac" and in need of backup, but if i wanna try a DP release of the JDK?

* Regarding the "economic" posts on providing an uninstaller - Having spent most of my time with Java on Linux platforms, I'm used to just getting a "tarball" from Sun. (for the TRUE mac-only honks - that's just a dumb .dmg file) where you just unpack it and you get a nice servicable directory structure ($JAVA_HOME/bin, $JAVA_HOME/lib/, $JAVA_HOME/jre/...) Now, Apple is a JDK licensee for Sun right? It makes me wonder about what form Apple gets JDK source dists from Sun. I postulate that most likely, Apple as a more "unix-y" licensee gets the JDK source in a form that's more like the tarball structure. I furthermore assert that Apple expends engineering resources (read "economic impact") to morph that into the .dmg where stuff goes in /Library and /System and /System.Frameworks and /bin, etc. So, it's economically better for Apple to expend engineering resources to put it in a structure that makes it economically intractable to undo it, rather than to just take the path of least resistance and leave it in the "JAVA_HOME" in which it originally came?

* To Greg Guerin specifically:

Greg writes:"Apple has already said it will happen with the next J2SE 5.0 release. Unless you can come up with a wide-reaching show-stopper bug that seriously impedes that decision, the only one that suffers is you. And potentially your customers. But if you're not testing the J2SE 5.0 release, then you can't possibly find any wide-reaching show-stopping bugs, so how could there be a chicken/egg problem?"

I respond: I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic with your response, but i'll assume you're not. My original question was framed under the context where Apple needs input on changing the platform default from "outside" developers like me and the folks under the list rather than only "internal testing from Apple engineers and QA". And if the decision rests in the developer feedback from the "external" people, and people have my mindset, then you're absolutely right, we'll *never* find any showstoppers. We'll *never* find *any* bugs in a DP. We'll never find anything good or bad. My guess your response indicates that indeed the switch to 1.5 (or eventual 1.6 for that matter) are inevitable, but the DP's give people a chance to indicate if there's something really bad? is that correct?

Paul Howland wrote:
Nice formulae, but somewhat meaningless given you have no idea of the values of x or y.

I find all this astonishing. I clearly stated that it is reasonable for Apple to *not* offer support for uninstallation for a DP, so we're talking here about the cost of an engineer sitting down and writing some notes on what files need to be deleted and what config files to be edited in order to allow the user to be able to reinstall a supported version. The cost of this is probably an afternoon's work at most. Really, this is not very much to ask and from the response here you'd think people were asking for something unusual! The ability to uninstall or at least some notes on how to manually uninstall is fundamental - even the sloppiest of open-source projects normally includes such advice. Given that Sun manage to provide uninstallers on their *nightly builds* of Java 6.0 for seven different platforms (including Windows of all platforms), I struggle to understand why Apple can't at least provide some basic advice on how to remove DP's that are issued about once a month for one platform ...

Paul


On Jan 22, 2006, at 11:55 AM, Cameron Hayne wrote:

On 22-Jan-06, at 2:26 AM, Paul Howland wrote:

Economics has nothing to do with it

I agree with Greg in that I think economics has *everything* to do with it.


Definitions:
x = extra cost to Apple of providing uninstall instructions (includes cost of extra support if something goes wrong)
y = extra benefit to Apple from having more developers using the DPs because of these uninstall instructions


Assertion:
x > y

--
Cameron Hayne
email@hidden
_______________________________________________
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.
Java-dev mailing list      (email@hidden)
Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription:
http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/java-dev/email@hidden

This email sent to email@hidden

_______________________________________________
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.
Java-dev mailing list      (email@hidden)
Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription:
http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/java-dev/email@hidden

This email sent to email@hidden
References: 
 >Re: uninstalling a jdk/jre (From: Greg Guerin <email@hidden>)
 >Re: uninstalling a jdk/jre (From: Paul Howland <email@hidden>)
 >Re: uninstalling a jdk/jre (From: Cameron Hayne <email@hidden>)
 >Re: uninstalling a jdk/jre (From: Paul Howland <email@hidden>)



Visit the Apple Store online or at retail locations.
1-800-MY-APPLE

Contact Apple | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2007 Apple Inc. All rights reserved.