Java port maintainers: What should be installed on the buildbot workers?

[Aaron Madlon-Kay]

> Huh. The system requirements linked from the download page say "Intel-based Mac running Mac OS X 10.7.3 (Lion) or later.”

Very interesting. I was able to install JDK 8u161 in my OS X 10.7.5 VM. Apparently Oracle has had contradictory advice about this for a long time, and they never cleared it up:
https://derflounder.wordpress.com/2015/01/10/oracles-java-8-and-mac-os-x-10-7-x/

I stand corrected.

> The Mac FAQ also says "If installing an older version of Java is absolutely required, you must first uninstall the current version"; from this I assumed that simultaneous installation of multiple versions is not possible.

That’s probably talking about the JRE at /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/JavaAppletPlugin.plugin; an older one will never overwrite a newer one already present there. However we are concerned with the JDK, which lives at /Library/JavaVirtualMachines, and it is most definitely possible to have multiple JDKs installed there.

> Apparently Java 9 exists. It is mentioned on oracle.com but not on java.com. I don't know if I should be attempting to install 8 or 9.

Java 9 is very new, and it has changes that break building for a large number of projects that are not yet specifically targeting it. I would stick with Java 8 for the near future.

-Aaron