JFileChooser for directories on the Mac: how to make it not suck?

Question

The JFileChooser in "directories only" mode on the Mac has two serious, crippling problems:

1) You cannot create directories with it

2) You cannot switch drives

This is rather a huge problem for my installer app. As far as I can tell, Apple provides no way around this problem, you can't even activate the non-native directory chooser ... so the only alternative is to find a free/open source pure-Java replacement widget.

Does anybody know of one?

Answer 1

What about using java.awt.FileDialog? It shows a native file chooser and allows creating new folders.

public static void main(String[] args) throws UnsupportedLookAndFeelException {
    JFrame frame = new JFrame();
    System.setProperty("apple.awt.fileDialogForDirectories", "true");
    FileDialog d = new FileDialog(frame);
    d.setVisible(true);
}

Answer 2

I discovered that there is a magic property you can set that makes the awt filepicker do the right thing:

System.setProperty("apple.awt.fileDialogForDirectories", "true");

I vaguely recall trying this before when I was on OS X 10.4 and it didn't work, but now I'm on Leopard and it does, so I'm a happy camper.

Answer 3

JFileChooser can see external drives. Navigate down from the root into /Volumes and all drives are listed there. It's not elegant, but it works...

http://lists.apple.com/archives/java-dev///2008/Feb/msg00079.html