- We only ship the JDK. There is no JDK/JRE difference on MacOSX.
- /Applications/Utilities/Java/Java Preferences.app lets you switch
the java version used in applets and double-clickable bundled apps.
- Beginning Leopard, Java Preferences also affects the java used on
the command line. If you set Java 6 as your preferred VM, the java/
javac used on the command line will use 1.6. If you set it to 1.4,
well that's what you'll get.
- The ant javac task uses JAVA_HOME environment variable. It defaults
to /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Home if it doesn't find
one.
- We do NOT set JAVA_HOME environment variable for you. You can file
an enhancement request if you think we should.
- The CurrentJDK symlink in JavaVM.framework/Versions is controlled by
Apple. Please do not change. It will always point to the preferred
Java VM as decided by us. When we shipped Tiger, it pointed to 1.4.
Later Java updates on Tiger changed that to 1.5. For Leopard, it
points to 1.5.
- Note, again, that even though CurrentJDK points to 1.5, /usr/bin/
java will run the 1.6 java if you specify so in Java Preferences.
Thanks Shawn (and everybody else, too). By the way, I appreciate
both the
volume and friendly attitude of all the responses on this list.
The thing about the OSs is there is at least one difference between
the mac
and others. And that difference is "Java Home." I don't know of
another OS
gives you a concept like that. Since it only sort-of works (or, it
works
most of the time but not all of the time), it leaves developers no
other
choice but to write their own escape hatch, as the Ant folks did
with the
tactic of the JAVA_HOME environment variable. According to the
Technical Q&A
that describes "Java Home," they shouldn't have needed to do that.
Which is
basically why I posted in the first place and why I felt like I must
have
been missing something. But maybe I'm not- maybe nobody really
understands
this "Java Home" thing any better than I do.
Kirk
On 6/24/08 8:14 AM, "Shawn Erickson" <email@hidden> wrote:
On Mon, Jun 23, 2008 at 10:26 PM, Kirk Mattson <email@hidden>
wrote:
Yes, and maybe the difference between the mac and other OSs is
part of it.
That is just it ... really no great difference exists between Java on
Mac OS X and any other unix system (or Windows for that matter)
:)
Sure Apple includes a few versions of Java as part of the operating
system however the way that developers interact with Java (command
line tools, IDE, etc.) are basically the same as any other unix
system. The only real exception is the fact of the Java Perferences
tools which can be used to adjust which Java is used (personally I
don't use it to adjust things for my developer tools).
Like other unix systems you can use shell environment settings to
adjust what the tools, that you launch under that environment, will
do
and/or you use fully qualified paths to the tools you wan to use.
This
is what I do.. this way I know what is taking place. Using shell
environment settings also allows you to limit the affects of your
adjustments to just the tools / workflow you want adjusted (Java
Preferences is global).
-Shawn
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