Java 1.3.1 Available for Mac OS X

moofman and TheAJofOZ write in that Java 1.3.1 Update 1 is available for Mac OS X. The new release offers text, mouse, and printing improvements, as well as better overall stability and compatibility. Mac OS X 10.1.3 is a prerequisite. Get it via Software Update, or download it from Apple. For more information, check out the developer release notes.

Comments

Correct pathname for graphics accel config

[melquiades]

This update apparently improves graphics hardware acceleration for Java (haven't tested it yet). It's still somewhat experimental, so you have to turn it on manually. With the new update, you specify the video cards for which you want it enabled. The release notes explain how to do this, but give the wrong path for the config file that has the names of the video cards your machine might support. The correct path seems to be:

/Library/Java/Home/lib/glconfigurationlist.propert ies

Curious to see if there's an improvement. Though the low-level stuff is blazingly fast on OS X, the high-level, especially Swing, has been pretty sluggish.

Re:nice but how about 1.4.0

[blamanj]

A preview of 1.4.0 will be made available at WWDC, according to Apple.

Your questions about 1.4 answered

[melquiades]

A lot of us are wondering about 1.4. Some time ago, Allen Denison of Apple posted this message on Apple's Java-dev list which answers a lot of your concerns.

The short: they are prioritizing getting it right over getting it fast, but closing the release gap between Sun's and Apple's Java updates is a major goal for Apple. They are actively working on 1.4, and general speculation is that it will be available Q2.

And yes, as numerous others have pointed out, 1.3.1 has been out for OS X for about five months. This is just a patch to 1.3.1.

Re:Impressive

[DavidRavenMoon]

However, with MacOS X the installer scripts continue to be intolerant of moving applications from their default directory (typically "/Applications"). For example, I moved the "/Applications/Mail" app to "/Applications/Internet/Mail" and MacOS X 10.1.3 failed to update it properly. This has been mentioned on MacFixit as well.

This was posted on MacIntouch the other day:

In the System 6-9 days, Apple used an installer that used a quasi-proprietary file format known as "tomes." The tome-based installers supported HFS file descriptors, so it could write over a file no matter where it was located in the hierarchy of the disk. It also treated aliases with respect.

Starting with Mac OS X, Apple moved to a package-based installer that uses Pax as its archival format. Pax was not created by Apple; see its man page (type "man pax" in the terminal for more information). The Pax-based installation system has two big drawbacks:

1. Pax installs files based on its path; Pax does not support the file descriptors used in HFS/HFS+. (The other Mac OS X disk format, UFS, doesn't support file descriptors.) This basically means Pax won't look to see if the item to be installed is already on the disk but in a different location.

2. If the path specified in a Pax archive actually exists physically on the disk, then Pax will correctly follow the path and overwrite the correct files. But if that path uses any type of link (hard link, symbolic link, or System 7-style alias), then Pax will blow away the link and create a physical directory structure as specified in the archive. In other words, it will not only ignore links, but it will overwrite them.

#1 may just be a sign of the times, since the Unix world doesn't have any real concept of file descriptors; they've been sort of a Mac-only thing. #2 is a flaw in Pax's design.

As a consequence of both, though, until Apple comes up with a better package system, it's a bad idea to move anything that Mac OS X installs from its default place. That includes moving stuff around and making aliases; it's broken right now.