Java company name change breaks Eclipse



  •  http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6969236

     "As part of Oracle's rebranding of Sun's products, the Company Name property of the java.exe file, the executable file containing Oracle's JRE for Windows, was updated from "Sun Microsystems" to "Oracle" in Java SE 6u21."

    "Any Eclipse version since 3.3 (released 2007)  has been reported to crash with an OutOfMemoryError due to this regression. The OutOfMemoryError is not understandable for end users, and the workaround is not obvious."

    "engineering side note: The "Java" property values for java.vendor and java.vm.vendor were never changed in the jdk6 releases and will remain "Sun Microsystems, Inc.". The Windows specific exe/dll file "COMPANY" value is what is at issue here, not the Java properties. It came as a surprise to us that anyone would be inspecting or depending on the value of this very platform specific field. Regardless, we will restore the COMPANY field in the jdk6 releases. Note that the jdk7 releases will eventually be changing to Oracle, including the java.vendor and java.vm.vendor properties."

     

     

     

     

     



  • All this because someone wanted to know whether to pass the -XX:MaxPermSize argument to the VM?

    At least they admit that going from Sun to Oracle is a regression.



  • I have to wonder why the field is there, and why they're bothering to keep its information current, if they don't expect anyone to do anything with that information.



  • @Someone You Know said:

    I have to wonder why the field is there, and why they're bothering to keep its information current, if they don't expect anyone to do anything with that information.
    The most reasonable explanation I have heard is that the field is being used to differentiate between the Java VMs' of different companies (ie Sun vs Microsoft) and hence effectively sniff for implementation differences. However I have never use Java let alone compared Sun's VM to Microsofts's VM so if any Java experts can shoot that argument down - please do so.



  • Well, of course you can't have an Eclipse without a Sun. Common sense, really.



  • @Someone You Know said:

    I have to wonder why the field is there, and why they're bothering to keep its information current, if they don't expect anyone to do anything with that information.
    I'm sure that's just spit out automatically by the compiler.

    @OzPeter said:

    The most reasonable explanation I have heard is that the field is being used to differentiate between the Java VMs' of different companies (ie Sun vs Microsoft) and hence effectively sniff for implementation differences. However I have never use Java let alone compared Sun's VM to Microsofts's VM so if any Java experts can shoot that argument down - please do so.
    There are official system properties that are queriable at runtime (like [url="http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/lang/System.html#getProperties%28%29"][code]System.getProperty("java.vm.vendor")[/code][/url] and others), but the field in question is not part of the System properties but just embedded metadata in the .exe file; not something that the Java runtime would ever care about.  However, short of running a small test program to return the System property, there may not be a direct way of asking the executable itself about its source, no way of knowing the vendor before running the executable, apart from the .exe metadata.  I guess that's the route the Eclipse programmer took. 

    As the link reads, this metadata isn't available on other platforms, so it's rather curious as to why the programmer decided to use it for the Windows version instead of applying the same method used elsewhere.



  • Has to be said:  You get what you pay for.



  • Ah, open source... where the people who wouldn't survive 5 minutes in a peer-reviewed programming shop, get to make poor design decisions that will affect multitudes of users.

    Although only 5 people have posted nerdrage on that Sun bug report, so maybe the number of developers using Eclipse is far less than I believe. Let's hope so.



  • @The_Assimilator said:

    Ah, open source... where the people who wouldn't survive 5 minutes in a peer-reviewed programming shop, get to make poor design decisions that will affect multitudes of users.

    Although only 5 people have posted nerdrage on that Sun bug report, so maybe the number of developers using Eclipse is far less than I believe. Let's hope so.

    Or maybe it means most users of Eclipse don't use it for Java.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @The_Assimilator said:

    Ah, open source... where the people who wouldn't survive 5 minutes in a peer-reviewed programming shop, get to make poor design decisions that will affect multitudes of users.

    Although only 5 people have posted nerdrage on that Sun bug report, so maybe the number of developers using Eclipse is far less than I believe. Let's hope so.

    Or maybe it means most users of Eclipse don't use it for Java.

     

    I would be surprised if the majority of Eclipse users don't use it for Java.  More likely the majority of Eclipse users don't update their JRE/JDK that frequently.



  • @cconroy said:

    @blakeyrat said:

    @The_Assimilator said:

    Ah, open source... where the people who wouldn't survive 5 minutes in a peer-reviewed programming shop, get to make poor design decisions that will affect multitudes of users.

    Although only 5 people have posted nerdrage on that Sun bug report, so maybe the number of developers using Eclipse is far less than I believe. Let's hope so.

    Or maybe it means most users of Eclipse don't use it for Java.

     

    I would be surprised if the majority of Eclipse users don't use it for Java.  More likely the majority of Eclipse users don't update their JRE/JDK [b]the JRE that Eclipse runs on, which may differ wildly in version from the JDK they're developing against,[/b] that frequently.

     

    FTFY.



  • @cconroy said:

    @blakeyrat said:

    @The_Assimilator said:

    Ah, open source... where the people who wouldn't survive 5 minutes in a peer-reviewed programming shop, get to make poor design decisions that will affect multitudes of users.

    Although only 5 people have posted nerdrage on that Sun bug report, so maybe the number of developers using Eclipse is far less than I believe. Let's hope so.

    Or maybe it means most users of Eclipse don't use it for Java.

     

    I would be surprised if the majority of Eclipse users don't use it for Java.  More likely the majority of Eclipse users don't update their JRE/JDK that frequently.

    I dunno, I do web stuff primarily, so I've only really seen it used for Flash Builder and Aptana for JS/HTML/etc.

    I was also confused on whether this bug involved the Java version that Eclipse itself runs on, or the Java version that it's compiling for-- I assumed the latter.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @The_Assimilator said:

    Ah, open source... where the people who wouldn't survive 5 minutes in a peer-reviewed programming shop, get to make poor design decisions that will affect multitudes of users.

    Although only 5 people have posted nerdrage on that Sun bug report, so maybe the number of developers using Eclipse is far less than I believe. Let's hope so.

    Or maybe it means most users of Eclipse don't use it for Java.

    What do they use it for then, wasting their CPU cycles so it looks like they're actually doing work?



  • @The_Assimilator said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    @The_Assimilator said:

    Ah, open source... where the people who wouldn't survive 5 minutes in a peer-reviewed programming shop, get to make poor design decisions that will affect multitudes of users.

    Although only 5 people have posted nerdrage on that Sun bug report, so maybe the number of developers using Eclipse is far less than I believe. Let's hope so.

    Or maybe it means most users of Eclipse don't use it for Java.

    What do they use it for then, wasting their CPU cycles so it looks like they're actually doing work?

    I extremely grudgingly admit, despite my hatred of Java GUI apps, that Aptana Studio is not a bad editor for web languages. The UI still sucks ass, as do all Java UIs, but it can actually make up for that for having more auto-complete/intellisense features than Visual Studio and less general retardedness than Dreamweaver.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    I dunno, I do web stuff primarily, so I've only really seen it used for Flash Builder and Aptana for JS/HTML/etc.

    That's kind of like an adult store owner saying they have only ever seen computers used for looking at porn.   Wait...


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