[evla-sw-discuss] Java 7 on EVLA

[Kevin Ryan]

I just found out today that the EVLA will be switching to Java 7 soon.  As in a week or two.  While Java for the Mac OS X is moving away from Apple and to Oracle control, it is still not ready for prime time and OS X software updates still use Apple versions that do not include Java 7 (as far as I know).

Java 7 can be fetched from Oracle as a stand-alone download (as opposed to a software update) but will only work on OS X 10.7 (Lion) or later.

Josh Malone if you know anything about the near future of Java on Macs please feel free to chime in.

With this in mind, the issue I see with the EVLA moving to Java 7 is with its client (GUI) applications.  There are a significant number of Macs used (or perhaps better to say a number of significant people using Macs) in the development and testing of the EVLA now (at least on WIDAR); compiling client applications under Java 7 would alienate them.

I plan to keep the WIDAR Correlator GUIs under Java 6 because I can think of no issues that would prevent them from 'talking' to Java 7 servers.  I think we should discuss doing the same with java-based antenna UI software also.

The other issue that may arise is with the CMIBs; I believe they are running the same version of Linux as the other servers in the system so, theoretically, they should be able to handle Java 7 - unless it uses significantly more resources (memory/cpu power).  We will start testing Java 7 on CMIBs next week.

Kevin