Java 7 for Mac OSX (original) (raw)

Johannes Schindelin Johannes.Schindelin at gmx.de
Tue Feb 21 15🔞21 PST 2012

Hi Richard,

On Tue, 21 Feb 2012, Richard Bair wrote:

A huge (I would say, central) reason why Java deployment is chronically struggling is related to installed JREs and incompatibilities from one release to the next.

That is what I referred to when I said "pushing the burden".

I grant you that it would be easier on the JDK/JRE developers.

In addition, every single time we fix a bug with a semantic side effect, somebody out there is going to be broken.

You know, that is why some developers refrain from relying on undocumented behavior.

As an application developer, I would never, ever, release software without tying it to exactly a specific version of the JRE. I would never rely on Java being preinstalled, in any circumstance. It is guaranteed to break at some unspecified time in the future.

By that reasoning, we should all ship our software together with specific OS versions (not allowing for system updates, that might change the behavior and break the application). Just completing the logical argument, is all I did.

The way you are suggesting things to be done guarantees that some security flaw which was fixed in Java for decades will still come back to bite the users. Or that improvements in the JIT do not reach them.

Just to be ultra-clear: is what you suggest -- to stop having a system-wide, well-maintained JRE in favor of JREs bundled with each and every Java application -- the official stance of Oracle, or is this just your personal opinion?

Ciao, Johannes

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