[isabelle-dev] Java 1.7 on Mac OS X

[Makarius]

Dear Mac Users,

I wonder what is the short-term situation for Java on that platform, also 
for the next Isabelle release.

Apple has deprecated its official 1.6 version for Snow Leopard last year, 
and for Lion there is no Java shipped by default. Oracle has promised to 
provide a solid 1.8 version next year or so. For now one probably needs to 
workaround with old 1.6 or some intermediate 1.7 versions.  Does anybody 
have experience with that on Mac OS X?

I've recently experimented with OpenJDK 1.7 for Mac OS, and found it 
usable under the assumption that the Mac is another Linux, with Nimbus 
Look-and-feel and CONTROL-XCV for cut-copy-paste etc.  Also many of the 
Mac-specfic problems were gone, like the famous bold-font problem.

The result of that experiment is available as Isabelle component here: 
http://www4.in.tum.de/~wenzelm/test/jdk_x86-darwin.tar.gz -- it will set 
ISABELLE_JDK_HOME such that the result builds on top of OpenJDK 1.7.


 	Makarius