Java News from Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Apple's posted Java 5 Release 3 for Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger). "Java 2 Platform Standard Edition (J2SE) 5.0 Release 3 includes version 1.5.0_05 and improves functionality of J2SE 5.0 on Mac OS X v 10.4 Tiger 10.4.2 and later. This release does not replace the existing installation of J2SE 1.4.2." According to Apple's Michael McDougall:

Just like in the developer previews, you need to do a little bit extra after the install to get everything updated correctly:

  1. Open /Applications/Utilities/Java/J2SE 5.0/Java Preferences
  2. In the Java Applet Runtime Settings panel, switch from using J2SE 5.0 back to J2SE 1.4.2
  3. Click 'Save'
  4. Switch once again, from J2SE 1.4.2 back to J2SE 5.0
  5. Click 'Save' again

This is mostly a bug fix release, including a workaround for some SWT problems.


I've posted the notes from yesterday's JUnit for Testers tutorial at STARWest. JUnit is normally thought of as a programmer's tool rather than a tester's tool. However I think some interesting things can happen if the testers get to write the JUnit tests as well; not least among them it makes it a lot harder for the programmers to deny the existence of a bug and close it as "Can't reproduce."