Apple's Java Versions Directory Needs Some Love

First off, I want to thank Apple for being such big supporters of Java. You may have gone off and done your own thing, but as Java developers, we still have to give some serious kudos. However, what has been going on with symlinks in the /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions directory is wrong. If I remember correctly, I noticed this at first with the upgrade to Snow Leopard, and it seems to have continued to happen with each subsequent update since. (So this article is way late, but so be it.) Here's what it looks like: (I had to remove a few directories from the listing and others were there before from previous upgrades, so it may not look exactly the same as yours.) May 24 09:15 1.3 -> 1.3.1 Jul 20 2009 1.3.1 May 24 09:15 1.4 -> CurrentJDK May 24 09:15 1.4.2 -> CurrentJDK May 24 09:15 1.5 -> CurrentJDK May 24 09:15 1.5.0 -> CurrentJDK May 24 09:15 1.6 -> 1.6.0 Nov 30 2009 1.6.0 May 24 09:15 A May 24 09:15 Current -> A May 24 09:15 CurrentJDK -> 1.6 Apple keeps pointing the symlinks for previous versions of Java at the Current/CurrentJDK directories which are Java 6. I'm guessing that this is probably just for backwards compatibility with Apps for OS X that need to run on older Java versions, and Apple doesn't want to bother maintaining them? It is true that some older Java apps/libraries will work this way, even though I had a few that didn't. So the bulk of OS X users that aren't Jav...

Date: June, 23 2010
Url: http://www.java.net/blog/garysweaver/archive/2010/06/23/apples-java-versions-directory-needs-some-love

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