LO and Java 8u25

users
#1

Hello there,

I have a fresh, clean install of OS X Yosemite on my Mac, along with Java 8u25 and LibreOffice 4.3.2.2.

I can't make LibreOffice "see” Java, as shown on the screen shot below. Any hints to share?

Thanks.

Alain.

#2

<https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=74877> "OS X 10.9: abrupt exit of LO in JNI_CreateJavaVM w/ Oracle Java 7 and w/o Apple Java 6." The workaround for that Oracle JRE bug is still to install Apple's "Java for OS X" alongside Oracle's JRE (as one gets prompted to do).

Stephan

#3

You need to download and install :

JavaForOSX2014-001.dmg

as well.

Alex

#4

Hi there,

Actually, installing "JavaForOSX2014-001.dmg” is exactly what I don’t want to do, for it would be polluting a fresh, clean system with a library being 4 versions old (Apple stop providing Java with OS X 10.6).

But…

Giving it a second thought showed that there is 2 available builds for OS X (both of version 4.3.2.2):

The second one, labelled “Mac OS X (x86_64 10.8 or newer required”, does the trick and recognises Java 8u25 as valid. Although we still get this nasty alert saying we should install Java…

Nevertheless, it works!

Thanks,

Alain.

#5

Hi Alain,

The second one, labelled “Mac OS X (x86_64 10.8 or newer required”, does the trick and recognises Java 8u25 as valid. Although we still get this nasty alert saying we should install Java…

You might still find that things don't work and that LO crashes as a
result in erratic and unpredictable circumstances. This is certainly the
case for the 4331 pre-release.

I take it you haven't had to do anything Base related yet ?

Alex

#6

Correct.

#7

Hi Alain,

Could you test whether :

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=85531

also affects you ?

Alex

#8

Hi Alain,

Hi Alex,

Creating a template as described in the bug report works just fine, no crash here.

It is not the template itself that causes the problem, but rather
"Saving as template" which invokes the template manager, but thanks for
testing.

Alex

#9

Hi Alex,

Creating a template as described in the bug report works just fine, no crash here.

Alain.

#10

Of course I did “Save as template…” in the process of creating a template. And no crash, nada, zilch.

Alain.

#11

Excellent, thanks for this

Alex

#12

Two things to note:

Any JREs that LO shows on Preferences' "LibreOffice - Advanced" pane must match the bitness of the given LO. So if you run a 32-bit LO it will only show 32-bit--capable JREs. The Apple Java 6 is 32-bit--capable, while the Orcale Java 8 is 64-bit--only.

If LO wants to actually use a JRE's JVM (for other purposes than detecting which JREs to show on the Preferences pane above), it does so via the JNI Invocation API. Oracle's Java 7 and 8 for Mac OS X have a bug that causes any process using that functionality to exit abruptly unless the Apple Java 6 is also installed (see <https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=74877> "OS X 10.9: abrupt exit of LO in JNI_CreateJavaVM w/ Oracle Java 7 and w/o Apple Java 6" for details; Oracle targeted a fix for that only for their Java 9). For LO, that means that it can appear to "suddenly crash" as soon as it tries to instantiate a JVM and Apple's Java 6 is not installed. And at what time LO will try to instantiate a JVM can be somewhat non-intuitive, e.g., it can happen as soon as you type something into Writer if you happen to have the Wiki Publisher extension installed (cf. <http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/commit/?id=1e54386411055b0049760faff2e1374a83191913> "'Official' TDF Mac builds are done w/o ext-wiki-publisher" and links from there for details).

Stephan