Don't get too excited, I got confused by the name as well... it's not Java 6 for Mac OS X, it's Java Release 6 - an update for J2SE 5.0 and Java 1.4
Still no Java 6 for OS X :-(
[UPDATED]
Looks like I spoke too soon.
Saturday, 15 December 2007
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3 comments:
Java versioning is a bit stupid isn't it?
In Leopard, when I run
java -version
I get:
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.5.0_13-b05-237)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.5.0_13-119, mixed mode, sharing)
What release is this?
(And why do I care? ;)
I think Sun had a change of heart half way through!
It must be a hot topic, considering there is a Wikipedia article devoted to it!
I think in summary, the J2 bit is now dropped in favour for just Java. Having Java 2, version 1.5 (or is that version 5.0?) was confusing.
But 1.5 is the developer version and 5.0 is the platform or product version. They refer to the same product.
Yep, I'm still confused!
Originally Java was called Oak, the bloke who invented it had an Oak tree outside his office window, and no imagination. When Sun discovered a language with this name already existed they switched it to Java. (Maybe they were drinking coffee?)
The change from "JDK" to "J2" was to emphasize the radical differences between the releases (a plethora of powerful new APIs were introduced). The change from "J2" to "Java", was because the radical differences were no longer relevant.
The version number system has never changed though! "1.5.0" was and is the internal version number, indeed the latest release is "1.6.0".
The code names for the releases were introduced because Sun never knew which version was going to be released to the field until after subsequent releases had been tagged (remind you of anything). To avoid confusion they decided to use code names.
Subsequently, Sun decided that they also wanted to be able to make changes to the language right up until release time. They didn't want to make this public common knowledge so they decided that an external naming system would be the best route, hence J2SE 5.0, and now Java SE 6.
To clarify: Sun consider the next release to be code named "Dolphin", externally it will be known as Java SE 7 (and will be marketed as such), and it will have an as yet unknown version number.
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