Can I do Java 6 development in OS X?

Question

I know when Leopard came out everybody (well, everybody that was a Java developer and cared enough to do development on a Mac) was pissed that there was no Java 6 SDK support. I know somebody provided some kind of hack way a few months after Leopard was released, but I could have sworn that I read sometime later that Apple and/or Sun finally put out an official version of the Java 6 SDK.

So now a year and a half later I am finally interested in doing some Java dev on the Mac (thank Google App Kit for that). But when I go to Apple's Java site... all I see is stuff about Java 5.

So, can I do Java 6 on a Mac?

See also: Installing Java 6 on Mac OS

Answer 1

Yes, JDK6 is available, and it is quite nice, for example it supports DTrace, which otherwise you only get on Solaris.

The main drawback is that Apple is very aggressive in deprecating older hardware (and OS versions). Java6 will never be released for Mac versions before 10.5, and only works on 64bit Intel. That also kills native 32 bit libraries, such as SWT/Carbon, which is what Eclipse uses (they need to move to Cocoa now).

Update: Snow Leopard apparently has Java6 for 32bit Intel, too (in addition to 64bit).

Answer 2

http://developer.apple.com/java/ (which is only for 64-bit Macs)

http://landonf.bikemonkey.org/static/soylatte/ (SoyLatte, a separate Java 6 port).