[Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 3] jni.h link (and others) missing ?

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[Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 3] jni.h link (and others) missing ?

Hello,

I've recently upgraded my Java for Mac to build 1.6.0_22-b04-307-10M3261.
When trying to re-compile a C/C++ project requiring jni.h (which was compiling correctly before the upgrade), I now get this compile error: "error: jni.h: No such file or directory"

When browsing for the file, I noticed it is still "virtually" located where it used to be, i.e. "System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Headers/jni.h", yet this jni.h is only an alias that points nowhere anymore. Same symptom for almost all other ".h" files in this folder. What is happening ? Is JNI dying on Mac OS ? This worries me quite a lot, as I work on several projects using JNI and which will loose compatibility on Mac.

On a related matter (but is this really due to update 3?), I've noticed some refactoring in the Java installation (some of the Java stuff seems to have been moved to the "/System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines" folder in the form of a ".bundle" file). Is this new ? If so, is this related to the problem above ?

If the solution is somewhat related to the probable Oracle takeover on Java support, is it possible in the meantime to downgrade Java back to update 2 to get my "jni.h" back in place ?

Thanks in advance for your help !

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.4), 2 x 2.8GHz / 10 Go

Posted on Oct 29, 2010 8:19 AM

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Answer 1

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Per Mildner

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5 points

Oct 31, 2010 12:30 PM in response to daft alx

The release notes <http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#releasenotes/Java/JavaSnowLeopardUpdat e3LeopardUpdate8RN/Introduction/Introduction.html> says "If you do JNI development, you must install the Java Developer package, since it contains updated headers for the native JavaVM.framework and its sub-frameworks (8421130). The Java Developer package is available from http://connect.apple.com."

I just ran the installer and it did replace the broken sym-links with real files which allowed our build to succeed.

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Answer 2

daft alx Author

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Nov 4, 2010 2:40 AM in response to Per Mildner

Thanks a lot for the pointer. I thought I had looked everywhere in the release notes, but I missed that part.
The download link itself was actually hard to get to, but finally I managed to get there.
Cheers

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Answer 3

Nov 21, 2010 7:08 AM in response to daft alx

Thanks for the note about the Java Developer package Per. I find that after installation of this, there's still a missing symlink to the include files.

Namely, /System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home/include does not exist (The Maven NAR Plugin uses this in its -I include path).

To kludge my system to get my build working again, I did:
$ cd /System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home
$ sudo ln -s /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Headers include

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Answer 4

etresoft

Level 9

51,616 points

Nov 21, 2010 5:49 PM in response to Matt Gumbley

It would probably be better to change the plugin than change the OS. This sounds like the same thing that caused many Java apps to fail with the last update. Many had hard-coded the expected path to the JVM instead of using the result of the java_home program.

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Answer 5

cxbrx

Level 1

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Dec 26, 2010 10:12 PM in response to Per Mildner

Thanks for the pointer.

Not including jni.h by default in the OS is a poor decision that creates a bug:
javah is included in 1.6.0_b22, and javah generates output that includes the line:

#include <jni.h>

The output of javah cannot be compiled unless the Java Developer Package has been installed.

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