Ok, here’s mine!

Vote for Java6 on Leopard!

As mentioned previously a lot of Java developers on OSX are upset at Apple’s silence as to its intentions with respect to the release of Java 6. There used to be a developer preview available, which was pulled recently with no indication as to when a replacement would be available. People like me who upgraded in the hope of having the latest and greatest – which we have been very patiently waiting for over a year for – are very disappointed. Some who are working on Java 6 projects cannot use their computer easily, without resorting to installation of a separate OS in a virtual machine, to do their job. We all like OSX: its a beautiful easy to use Unix that usually really helps us get our work done. I have been very happily using it since 2004.

The solution of course is to have our voice heard. One way to do this is to file a bug with Apple. Please do this! The only problem I have with it is that as opposed to the Java bug database which is completely open, the Apple bug database is completely closed. So there’s no real way of verifying how many people have posted a report. We must therefore complement that action with an equal Open action. Following the noble example given to us by Nova Spivack, when he asked for people to make their voice heard in support of the Burmese people and got some real results, let us do the same to help Apple make the right decision. Anybody who would like to support this issue in the blogosphere, should help post a blog with the string

13949712720901ForOSX

An excellent posting, countering some of the FUD spreading out there in Mac/Java developer land.

The Fishbowl: Java on Apple is dooooooomed

This puts Apple behind Sun (duh), on a par with IBM, slightly ahead of the remainder of Unix-land and, it’s worth mentioning in passing, light-years ahead of Microsoft and the Linux vendors who don’t even maintain their own JDKs any more (hands up if you remember waiting for the Linux Java ports from blackdown.org).

David Rupp’s Blog: The Last Language War / Language Trolling Post You’ll Ever Need To Read (Hopefully)

The Last Language War / Language Trolling Post You’ll Ever Need To Read (Hopefully)

Ever since I switched to my Mac, a little over 2 years ago, one of the things on my todo list has been to install WebLogic and get it running on the Mac.  It’s unsupported, but heck, it’s a Java application, so how hard could it be?  And it’s the Java application server that I am most familiar with (other than Tomcat), so I want to be able to use it.

A quick Google search revealed no information about WebLogic Server 10 on the Mac at all, so I reached further back.  It’s pretty easy, since the same steps that worked for WebLogic Server 9.x seem to work for 10.

1. First, download the “generic” installer for IBM AIX (that would be the ONLY installer for AIX).  You end up with a jar file called

   server100_generic.jar

2. Open up Terminal, and run the jar file using this command, to get around a problem in the installer that checks for free space by OS name:
   

   java -Dos.name=unix -jar server100_generic.jar

   I chose to install to /bea, so the adjust the path names appropriately, if you install elsewhere.
   
   
3. Update your /bea/wlserver_10.0/samples/domains/wl_server/bin/setDomainEnv.sh file to increase some memory parameters like so:
   

   MEM_ARGS=”-Xms512m -Xmx1024m -XX:MaxPermSize=128m”

4. Start your WebLogic Server by running:
   

   /bea/wlserver_10.0/samples/domains/wl_server/bin/startWebLogic.sh

5. Go to http://localhost:7001/index.jsp … Done!
   
   
6. Ok, not quite done, when you want to stop the server gracefully you need to run:
   

   /bea/wlserver_10.0/samples/domains/wl_server/bin/stopWebLogic.sh 

Editor’s Daily Blog: Out Of My Hands

What was once two racks of Java books at my nearby Barnes & Noble is now half a rack, not as a result of Java fading relative to other languages, but as a result of the entire programming section shrinking.

Headius: Java Native Access + JRuby = True POSIX

but the result will be true POSIX functionality in JRuby…the “last mile” of compatibility will largely be solved.

Java creator named to Order of Canada

The man credited with inventing the Java programming language commonly used on the World Wide Web has been appointed to the Order of Canada. James Gosling, a vice-president of Sun Microsystems Inc. of Santa Clara, Calif., has been named an officer of the Order of Canada, the office of the Governor General announced on Monday. Java creator James Gosling at the Sun Microsystems campus in Menlo Park, Calif., in 2005. Gosling is one of 29 Canadians named Officers of the Order of Canada and will receive his insignia later in 2007.

Work on a Mac notebook.  Plug in to an external monitor with a higher native resolution than your notebook screen.  While Eclipse is maximized to fill your external monitor, close it.  Unplug external monitor.  Start Eclipse again.  See the magic of having a window that is maximized, on all sides, beyond the edges of your screen.  Enjoy the dysfunction, because it cannot be fixed.  You cannot get to any menu or screen edge, which will allow you to resize or move the window.

After you’ve pulled sufficient hair out trying to fix this, hopefully you’ve Googled for a solution, and found this page.  You can’t resize your “too large” Eclipse window, but you can wack the wonky settings by closing Eclipse, deleting this file, and letting Eclipse regenerate it when you restart:

.../workspace/.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.ui.workbench/workbench.xml