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I promised to write an article ’bout getting Java 5 to work on Mac OS X. I needed this in preparation for my programming courses at university. So, first of all I found out that Java 5 is actually not 5.0 but 1.5, confusing, he?

So to begin with, you need OS X Tiger, it is reported to work work on Panther, too, but that requires a little configuration of the installer package with Pacifist. Let’s move, time is money… hehe. First of all you need to download Java 5 Beta from the Apple website. Follow the installer:

Now you go to /Applications/Utilities/Java/J2SE 5.0 in Finder and start Java Preferences. From within there you make some necessary changes. Change “Use version:” to J2SE 5.0 and at runtime settings drag J2SE 5.0 to be above J2SE 1.4.2. That’s it. Click Save at the bottom of the window and quit.

You’re ready to use Java 1.5 on your Mac, but wait, where is the compiler? Well, I can tell you, it resides in /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.5/Commands/javac. Nice, is’nt it? If you want to work with XCode you can change the compiler – as well as the executable path for every project to match Java 5 Binarys.

I found this annoying and decided to take a XCode template and set it up to use Java 1.5. It’s pretty simple! Just get an existing Java Template from /Library/Application Support/Apple/Developer Tools/Project Templates/Java. I took the Java Tool folder and copied it over to my Desktop. Now i opened it in XCode and let XCode update it.

Following this article from Apple you change the following:

Update: There is a problem with the new template, indeed it seems that XCode 2.1 does not update the -jar argument (projectnameasidentifier).jar. Yaw Anokwa commented on this and was able to create an XCode template which fixes this issue. You can download it from here. Follow the instructions.txt in the archive.

Thanks to Yaw Anokwa for pointing this out.

Target Settings:
Double click the target to edit and provide /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.5/Commands/javac as the value for the JAVA_COMPILER build setting. Change the Target VM Version and Source Version in the Java Compiler Setting to use 1.5.
(To do this select ‘Default’ to show configuration at the top left of the window. Then select Expert View, then Java Compiler Settings.)

Executable Settings:
Double click the executable named java and enter /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.5/Commands/java as the Executable Path in the General tab of Executable info.

Now you are almost finished. To have a better sorting in the Templates window of XCode i created a new folder in the Project Templates Directory named ‘Java 5′. Now i again copy the new template from my Desktop over to the Java 5 folder.

Now you create a new project in XCode you will find our Java 5 Tool template. You can do that with all the other Java templates if you want.