Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Enabling Java 1.6 for Mac OS X

OK, I might be the last Java developer using a Mac to realize this, but apparently Mac OS X 1.5 (Tiger) uses J2SE 5.0 by default, even though Java SE 6 has been available for nearly two years.

I figured this out today while reading Google's instructions on how to create Java applications for App Engine. (Side note: Woot!) The section regarding compatibility with different versions of Java contained this curious sentence:
For developers that don't have easy access to Java 6 (such as developers using Mac OS X), the App Engine SDK is compatible with Java 5.
That was a head-scratcher. I know that Apple's support for Java usually lags Sun's releases for Windows/Solaris/Linux by a few months, but Java 6 was released over two years ago. Surely Apple has caught up by now, right? To the Terminal window!
Hank:~ mtye$ java -version
java version "1.5.0_16"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.5.0_16-b06-284)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.5.0_16-133, mixed mode, sharing)

Huh. That can't be right, can it? No, a little poking around on Apple's site reveals that Java SE 6 was pushed out to users with Java for Mac OS X 10.5 Update 1, back in May 2008. So where's my Java 6?

I found a crucial clue here. Apparently, in the /Applications/Utilities/Java directory, there's a Java Preferences application that can be used to determine which Java version is used by default. I fired it up and got this:

Oh, there's Java 6! Right behind the 32-bit version of Java 5, for some reason. Let's fix that with a little drag & drop:


Let's check again:
Hank:~ mtye$ java -version
java version "1.6.0_07"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_07-b06-153)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 1.6.0_07-b06-57, mixed mode)
Ah, that's much better. I feel so 2007 now!

16 comments:

  1. Thanks a lot. I am impressed that some programs could not find the v1.6

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  2. Thanks buddy! I thought, I was doomed but you saved me :)

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  3. You said "Mac OS X 1.5 (Tiger) uses J2SE "

    Mac OS X 10.4 is Tiger

    Mac OS X 10.5 is Leopard

    Mac OS X 10.6 is Snow Leopard

    The BIG question is if 10.4 Tiger can run Java 1.6. Do you know?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks. That was VERY helpful. Gotta wonder why mac does that.

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  5. extremely bummed to find out i cant run se 6 on my powerbook g4

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  6. This didn't work for me, after performing this change in Utilities I still had
    $ java -version
    java version "1.5.0_30"
    Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.5.0_30-b03-389-9M3425)
    Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.5.0_30-161, mixed mode, sharing)

    I noted that /usr/bin/java was a symlink

    $ ls -ld ` which java `
    lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 74 Jul 16 2011 /usr/bin/java -> /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/Current/Commands/java

    So I reset it as below

    cd /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions
    sudo mv Current Current.old
    sudo mv CurrentJDK CurrentJDK.old
    sudo ln -s 1.6 CurrentJDK
    sudo ln -s 1.6 Current

    That worked fine.

    ReplyDelete
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