Starting with the next version of Mac OS X, Java will no longer be included in the system and I don't want to force my customers to install it themselves. So I would like to do what I do on Windows - bundle it with my app. It also gives me some hope that it could get included in the Mac App Store.
Where can I download a Mac OS X JRE that I could include with my application? Or can I just copy the one that's installed on my Mac?
Update (4/15/2013):
As Thorbjørn helpfully pointed out, Oracle now has a solution for this. See http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/technotes/guides/jweb/packagingAppsForMac.html. However, I'm keeping the original content for "historical purposes", and because it was a fun research project.
Previous version (with edits):
This is a great question. I was going to respond that you are simply ahead of your time -- as you pointed out, Java is not going to be removed until the Lion release. However, this article makes it clear that using Java today is not allowed:
Apps that use deprecated or optionally installed technologies (e.g., Java, [PowerPC code requiring] Rosetta) will be rejected.
At the same time, no one has announced a redistributable JRE for Mac OS X yet. I think your best bet, bearing in mind that you are forging new ground, is to check out the Mac OS X Port wiki page of the OpenJDK project. It does describe how to compile your own JDK, but it does not clearly state whether or not the resulting JDK can be "bundled" cleanly or not. I think you will have to try it and see :-(.
Also, it's not clear if the OpenJDK licensing allows this at all (IANAL). Hopefully someone else has already figured this out with regard to Linux/Windows, although of course the rules may be different for the Apple contributions.
Hope this helps. If nothing else, it's a starting point.
EDIT: I am going to throw out one additional suggestion. We now know that Mono apps can be packaged for the App Store. Furthermore, IKVM.NET is a complete implementation of Java that runs on top of Mono. You could try, in theory, to put these two pieces together and get a Java app, bundled for the App Store, that does not in fact require a JRE!
If you try this, I would love to hear how it works out :-).
EDIT 2: Unfortunately, the App Store and the GPL do not appear to be compatible (see http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/no-gpl-apps-for-apples-app-store/8046). The OpenJDK license isn't exactly the same as the GPL, but it's pretty close (again, IANAL). Therefore, Mono & IKVM.NET may be your best bet. Good luck!
In the same web search that I found this question, I've found the these instructions from the OpenJDK project. Not having tried them myself, I cannot comment on how well they work.
Meanwhile, another, very detailled article was published by Marco Dinacci which also goes into signing and sandboxing.
Apple has joined the Sun/Oracle OpenJDK open source project last month, so Java on Apple is alive and kicking.
Just tell the user to download and install the OpenJDK JRE for Mac OSX (when it becomes available, right now it´s just source code).
And no. you cannot include "the folder that is in your mac" without permission as it is copyrighted code from Apple.
Finally, packaging a "private JRE" is a very bad practice, it will make your app bloated, andif the user ends up running several Java apps, he will end up running multiple Java VMs simultaneously which is a terrible waste of system resources.
Related
I'm writing up a slideshow on keeping Xcode versions up to date.
It's not difficult to find out when Xcode versions BEGIN support, but not when Apple officially ENDS support.
Maybe the correct answer is "when the next version comes out," but the Xcode version tends to continue working for quite some time after the next variant comes out, and I know some folks that insist on using the old variant until the wheels fall off.
Eventually, the old version will no longer work on the current OS, and we need to hold back the OS to continue running the Xcode variant.
I need to find that point. I call it "The eBay Threshold." That's when we can no longer run the defined variant of Xcode on a new Mac, and need to buy old used Macs to run it.
As you might guess, this is a point of frustration for me. I hates ISO9001, as practiced by some outfits...
Thanks!
As you note, Apple stops supporting a version when the next version comes out. "When will it stop working" cannot have a definitive source because there is no firm definition of "working" in the absence of regression testing, and Apple does not regression test old versions of Xcode against new OS X releases.
The requirements are of course contradictory (which I expect you know). It makes some sense to demand near-total reproducibility. In that case, you must never upgrade the OS beyond the point release that existed when the next version of Xcode came out. Upgrading the OS beyond that means running Xcode in an untested mode, using "well, it seems to run" as your only criteria. At the very least, you would need to regression test your own software.
Obviously VMs are the best way to achieve this for a build infrastructure. The VMs need to be very carefully protected from outside traffic since they cannot receive even security updates without breaking their reproducibility.
Of course few develop Mac software this way. (This answer only makes sense for Mac development, and even then assumes that you are not submitting to the App Store. MAS and iOS development must keep up with the latest version of Xcode by Apple policy.)
I'm trying to modify the functionality of mission control which belongs to dock.app and I'm wondering what the preferred method of doing so would be. I've looked into using the simpler method of defaults but that won't give me enough control. I'm curious if people use something like Application Enhancer by Unsanity to execute custom code for these purposes.
Application Enhancer is effectively a dead project at this point -- while the current version does advertise support for Lion, Mountain Lion is slated for release within the next month, and it is unlikely that they will ever support it (as neither the Unsanity site nor their Twitter account has not been updated at all since last November). I would recommend strongly against using it for new products.
Under previous releases of OS X, SIMBL and PlugSuit have been popular, but neither one is available on Lion. The options seem to be more limited now; however, Rentzch's mach_star (mach_override / mach_inject) code seems to still be working.
I've been debating whether or not to bundle a JRE with my application. I've listed some reasons below why I think it would be useful, but I'm also hesitant to do this because it makes the app much larger.
Why I think it would be useful:
Right now the app is run by running a batch file (well, a shortcut to a batch file, it is run via a batch file). It just calls java -jar XXX, which requires Java to be in the path, which is not always the case.
We're a small team and not fully running on Java 7 (there are some strange errors we are trying to debug still). If a user has Java 7, they may have an unpleasant software experience - this is not good for us. Packaging a specific version of the JRE ensure we've fully tested on it.
We support 32 and 64 bit Windows platforms. When the user downloads the software, they choose 32 or 64-bit, but this is asking which version of Java are they using. Most users don't know if 32-bit java is installed on their 64-bit platform, and it can be confusing to download 32-bit even though their OS is 64-bit.
There are some good reasons why not to package it though:
If a security hole is in Java or other significant updates are made to the JRE, we need to distribute a new version of our app with a new Java version. We are generally updating our app every couple of weeks, so I'm not too concerned about this one right now.
The app will now be much larger because it includes a packaged JRE.
Can anyone provide some guidance as to whether or not (based on these requirements) they think it is a good idea to package the JRE? If not, what are some alternatives to just hoping that java is in the path (and more importantly if it's not, it is possible our users may not know how to add it).
Java Web Start. The JRE will be on the path.
For version control, see Java Web Start - Runtime Versioning & particularly Earlier Version.
JWS can partition resources between a 64 bit & 32 bit JRE.
So, 'bad idea to bundle JRE'. Use web-start instead.
I would suggest to NOT bundle the JRE although I often see it as a common practice.
Instead I would either use webstart (can be used offline as well) or some other installer or pacakge manager solution that ensures that Java is installed including the correct version. This will widely depend on the operating system you expect to run on.
Going down the way of including Java begs the question what else you want to include, just to be sure... which will lead you to the whole operating system and everything needed thought to the end.
I would also suggest to closely look into what types of users will install the app and adapt to that and make some sort of estimate on how capable they will be.
I'm new at programming on the Mac. I've got me a brand new copy of XCode 4.0. I've got people asking me what versions of MacOSX we'll be able to support but I'm not sure what to tell them.
I see options for selecting an "SDK" and other options for selecting a target version. It seems the lowest I can go is 10.4 though -- even though we'd like to support 10.3, if possible without a lot of pain.
My question is, could anyone give me a quick rundown of how sdk versions and target versions fit into this? As I'm coding, what kind of things do I need to watch out for to make sure I can still support the smallest version of MacOSX? Likewise, how do I figure the G4/G5 (PowerPC) versions of MacOSX into all this? For example, on Windows, if I write an app in c#, I know that all I need to do is make sure an appropriate version of .net framework is installed, regardless of the OS. Does something similar hold true for the MacOSX?
Thanks in advance.
I believe Apple has dropped PowerPC support completely, including Rosetta, in Mac OS X so 10.3 is out of the question.
If you want to support PowerPC, see this related question. It looks like a lot of work.
How can we restore ppc/ppc64 as well as full 10.4/10.5 SDK support to Xcode 4?
With the analogy to the .NET Framework, there isn't anything like that for Mac OS X built-in.
It is true for Mac OS X. If your program targets 10.3 SDK, it will be able to run on 10.3 or greater. I.e. the Base SDK project setting specifies minimum target OS version.
However, supporting 10.3 IS a lot of pain. Even 10.4 is not that easy, for example Objective-C 2.0 (most important, #property, garbage collection) is only available with 10.5 SDK or above.
The common solution in existing projects is to keep an old version of software available for 10.1-10.4 users, while the new versions will require 10.5 or greater (and also usually are Intel-only).
If you're starting a new project, you will probably want to distribute it via Mac AppStore, which only works on 10.6+, which means you can safely pick 10.6 SDK as the lowest target version.
Apple is way more harsh about upgrades than Microsoft. Mac users don't walk around with 10-years old systems on their laptops. The only reasons I can think of to still use 10.3 are using 10-year old mac, not having Internet connection and not knowing what “to update a software” means. So, I wouldn't care even about 10.4, not to say 10.3.
I'm wondering if anyone has any information or speculation as to when or if there will be a native windows version/port of Node.js.
There is an ongoing effort to provide a mingw port of Node.js. Version 0.3.6+ can be build that way.
However that is still experimental and anything but ready for more than quick and dirty development. Even in case this version matures, I suppose that it will always lag behind the *nix versions, mainly due to the fact that the event loop implementations that Node uses were originally written for those systems and APIs.
The windows version may become stable for development at some point in the future, but I hardly doubt it will ever be usable for production.
July 2011 Update:
#nodejs v0.5.1 is the first to ship with an official Windows executable. We're hoping to get some good feedback.
Microsoft has officially gotten involved with joyent in making node.js work natively on windows.
If one or two Windows C++ developers would put in the effort, then they could fill the gaps in the native Windows version and produce a node.js implementation that would be usable for production.
For now, there is a working Cygwin version and I don't know of any testing that shows it to be unsuitable for production. It certainly works fine (version 0.5.0pre) for development.
Have a look at:
http://www.rafaljonca.org/d/nodejs-windows
Which is based on the work of these guys here
http://node-js.prcn.co.cc/
Both good ways of getting node on windows if you dont have cygwin. However after many heartaches I found developing Node stuff on windows easiest by just using virtualbox with the ubuntu image.
Tnx
GT
I am strictly a Windows Dev and I have wanted to mess around with Node.js for quite a while.
It looks like Microsoft, Rackspace.com and the Node.js team are planning on working together port Node.js to Windows.
So, it's not hear yet but it should be soon. w00t!
The Official Node.js Blog
The first stable version has been released: Release details here.
Be sure to check for the latest version as the link above will go out of date.