Can I do Java 6 development in OS X?

Question

I know when Leopard came out everybody (well, everybody that was a Java developer and cared enough to do development on a Mac) was pissed that there was no Java 6 SDK support. I know somebody provided some kind of hack way a few months after Leopard was released, but I could have sworn that I read sometime later that Apple and/or Sun finally put out an official version of the Java 6 SDK.

So now a year and a half later I am finally interested in doing some Java dev on the Mac (thank Google App Kit for that). But when I go to Apple's Java site... all I see is stuff about Java 5.

So, can I do Java 6 on a Mac?

See also: Installing Java 6 on Mac OS

Answer 1

http://developer.apple.com/java/

Looks like you can.

Answer 2

Yes, JDK6 is available.

However, some versions of Eclipse do not support it. There is a new one (based on Cocoa) that should but it is not officially available.

Answer 3

Yes, JDK6 is available, and it is quite nice, for example it supports DTrace, which otherwise you only get on Solaris.

The main drawback is that Apple is very aggressive in deprecating older hardware (and OS versions). Java6 will never be released for Mac versions before 10.5, and only works on 64bit Intel. That also kills native 32 bit libraries, such as SWT/Carbon, which is what Eclipse uses (they need to move to Cocoa now).

Update: Snow Leopard apparently has Java6 for 32bit Intel, too (in addition to 64bit).

Answer 4

You can but you have to be very wary of Apple on this one. Sun released JDK 6 in December 2006. Apple released Java 6 for MacOS X a year later.

Why the delay? It seems that integrating the new Look and Feel was the answer but we don't have an official reason.

Now if Java 6 was important to you at the time this would've been (and was) a big deal.

As other answers mention, support for certain hardware and libraries can also be problematic.

windows and Linux are (imho) still the preferred Java development platforms. If it ever becomes critical you can always do Java development on a Mac in a VM however.

Answer 5

http://developer.apple.com/java/ (which is only for 64-bit Macs)

http://landonf.bikemonkey.org/static/soylatte/ (SoyLatte, a separate Java 6 port).

Answer 6

Partly. Apple released its version of Java SDK 6 a few months back. But there are still some functions which are not available on Apple's SDK 6 which exist in Sun's Java SDK 6. I don't know why this is so.

For e.g., after Unisys's patent on GIF format expired, Java included the capability to write image files in GIF format in SDK6. Yet, you still can't write GIF files on Apple's SDK.