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Apple deprecates Java

developer.apple.com

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Re: Apple deprecates Java

#101

Post by nileshk »

pmjordan wrote: post #65
lyso wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However it isn't just the Cocoa bindings that are important. AFAIK SoyLatte's Swing/AWT elements run through X11. Apple's Java allows for Java GUIs without starting X11.

Indeed, this will presumably affect users of Eclipse, Netbeans and similar. Not sure how many non-developer apps make use of those APIs, though, especially as they don't quite produce native look & feel. (still much better than X11, which is indeed terrible on OSX)

I think Eclipse is in a better position to handle this because it uses SWT instead of Swing. SWT is not produced by Apple, and uses native widgets (for OS X, there is both a Cocoa and Carbon version). So in theory, Eclipse could run on something like Soylatte without having to use X11.

It's the Swing apps (such as Netbeans, etc) that are potentially in trouble. Apple has been maintaining their own code for Swing. If they are going to stop maintaining this, I hope they contribute their changes back to OpenJDK so that someone attempting to maintain a Mac version does not have to reimplement this.

I wonder if Apple is really going to stop maintaining their port of Java, or if this move is to be able to say "you can't use Java for App Store for Mac apps because we could possibly stop including it." Or maybe they are planning to hand over development to Oracle.

Re: Apple deprecates Java

#102

Post by ZeroGravitas »

I was under the impression that iTunes (the backend server) was all written in Java using Apple's own WebObjects framework that they ported from Obj-C.

Have they ported it back, or are they planning to ship OpenJDK for server purposes?

Re: Apple deprecates Java

#103

Post by coliveira »

pmjordan wrote: post #59
fdb wrote: post #46

So then what's the best way to do cross-platform development? For all its faults, Java does deliver something that resembles the "write once, run anywhere" dream. Any idea for a high-performance, cross-platform, native UI development stack? Is C++/Objective-C still the best option?

UI & cross-platform dev are two separate issues. Cocoa/Java has been dead for some time, and nobody who cares about design or usability seems to use Swing etc. It mainly seems to be developer tools in the Java ecosystem. I'm more worried about development of server stuff becoming more painful, particularly as Clojure, my favourite language, is (currently) JVM-based. There's obviously plenty of other JVM-based server…

> I'm more worried about development of server stuff becoming more painful, particularly as Clojure, my favourite language, is (currently) JVM-based

That is what the clojure guys get for investing in a dead platform. Java as a language was dying. The sun-oracle deal means that the Java platform is also dead for open source.

Re: Apple deprecates Java

#104

Post by zenocon »

voidpointer wrote: post #60
fdb wrote: post #46

So then what's the best way to do cross-platform development? For all its faults, Java does deliver something that resembles the "write once, run anywhere" dream. Any idea for a high-performance, cross-platform, native UI development stack? Is C++/Objective-C still the best option?

Depending on what you want to do, Adobe AIR would be a practical way of delivering applications on Mac, Win and Linux...

I am building one now, and they do allow you to create a native installer for all three platforms. The only thing that sucks is that you have to build the installer on said platform. Not that big a deal with vmware, but still kind of annoying.

Re: Apple deprecates Java

#105

Post by cosmicray »

thought_alarm wrote: post #41
derefr wrote: post #8

Does this mean that if you want to distribute a Java app bundle, you must package the JRE into it as a framework?

No, it means that Apple is not bringing Java 7 to OS X. It doesn't prevent someone else from bringing Java 7 to OS X, nor does it mean that the existing support for Java 6 is going anywhere.

It also means that Apple has to apply fewer engineering resources to supporting Java.

OS X and iOS, full steam ahead !

Re: Apple deprecates Java

#106

Post by jwr »

That is very bad news for those of us who use Java on Mac OS X. And I don't mean UI programming, but developing server Java (or any JVM-hosted language, such as Clojure) applications.

Re: Apple deprecates Java

#107

Post by protomyth »

Corrado wrote: post #37
krelian wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was Java that big on the Mac? Neither Windows nor most Linux distros ship with a Java runtime.

Yes, at one point Apple made a big deal about Java being a "primary" language on the OS X platform. It had proper Coca bindings, Mac like look & feel, etc. Steve hawked it in one of the early OS X keynotes as being the future of the Mac platform. An easy language for all those that were confused by Objective-C. Several years ago Apple reversed their position on Java and have been ignoring it ever since. This is merel…

Apple's "proper Coca bindings" was probably an overstatement. It had a binding that didn't really work well and was incomplete due to the dynamic nature of Objective-C and the lack of it on Java.

Re: Apple deprecates Java

#108

Post by swannodette »

jwr wrote: post #106

That is very bad news for those of us who use Java on Mac OS X. And I don't mean UI programming, but developing server Java (or any JVM-hosted language, such as Clojure) applications.

Why? http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#releasenotes/Java/Ja...

The situation for Java will now be the same as that for developing in any programming language that Apple doesn't ship with OS X or that ships with a version lower than the one you are targeting.

My suspicion is that Apple is likely to drop Java in 10.8 which gives ~3 years for the JVM community on OS X to get their act together making OpenJDK work well with OS X.

That said, being a Clojure user this does increase my interest in seeing a Clojure-in-Clojure sooner than later. I'd like to see Clojure target LLVM the way MacRuby does.

Re: Apple deprecates Java

#109

Post by Samuel_Michon »

pmjordan wrote: post #65
lyso wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However it isn't just the Cocoa bindings that are important. AFAIK SoyLatte's Swing/AWT elements run through X11. Apple's Java allows for Java GUIs without starting X11.

Indeed, this will presumably affect users of Eclipse, Netbeans and similar. Not sure how many non-developer apps make use of those APIs, though, especially as they don't quite produce native look & feel. (still much better than X11, which is indeed terrible on OSX)

@nileshk: "I wonder if Apple is really going to stop maintaining their port of Java, or if this move is to be able to say "you can't use Java for App Store for Mac apps because we could possibly stop including it.""

From Apple's Mac App Store review guidelines: "Apps that use deprecated or optionally installed technologies (e.g., Java, [PowerPC code requiring] Rosetta) will be rejected."

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/10/20/apple_issues_r...

Java in XCode was already deprecated, but it sounds like there won't even be a (standard) install of the Java runtime in Mac OS X Lion.

Re: Apple deprecates Java

#110

Post by protomyth »

xentronium wrote: post #63

Does this effectively mean that I will not be able to use java application on newer OS X at all (in case of java runtime support removal), or I will have to install some third party java package?

It seems like you will do what you do on Windows and some Linux distributions, you will go to Oracle's site and download the JDK / JRE from them. I am really wondering if this is totally and Apple thing or partially a suggestion from Oracle.
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