This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Java Buzz by Charlton Barreto. Original Post: using the endorsed standards mechanism on Mac OS X Feed Title: charlton barreto's weblog Feed URL: http://www.mongoosesi.org/weblog/charlton/index.xml Feed Description: charlton barreto's weblog Latest Java Buzz Posts Latest Java Buzz Posts by Charlton Barreto Latest Posts From charlton barreto's weblog

to use Java's endorsed standards mechanism on Mac OS X, one has to recognise the equivalents to /jre on the platform:

/jre/bin = /Library/Java/Home/bin
/jre/lib = /Library/Java/Home/lib

thus, if one wishes to use the endorsed standards mechanism by copying jars to /jre/lib/endorsed/, on Mac OS X, one would do the following (assuming one is not logged in as root):

sudo mkdir /Library/Java/Home/lib/endorsed
sudo cp <my endorsed jars> /Library/Java/Home/lib/endorsed

one can otherwise execute:

java -Djava.endorsed.dirs=<yourDirectoryPath>

where <yourDirectoryPath> contains the jars to be loaded using this mechanism.

although the endorsed directory mechanism guarantees that the specified jars will be searched before the internal classes in the VM (which are searched before the classpath), the order in which the jar files are searched is indeterminate. as such, there should be no overlaps in the classes specified using that property. for more information, see the endorsed standards documentation for the 1.4 version of the Java platform.

if one chooses to use the endorsed standards mechanism on Mac OS X Java, the Java Shared Archive is no longer used. as such the JVM will use additional memory and take more time having the GC searching the JDK's generational heap for what are otherwise 'immortal' objects.

when using this with eclipse, note that there are issues on a number of platforms with installing suck libraries to the <JAVA_HOME>/lib/endorsed directory; instead, the -Djava.endorsed.dirs=... directive will need to be used when launching eclipse. as such, to choose a jaxp implementation with eclipse:

./eclipse -vmargs -Djava.endorsed.dirs=./jaxp1.3/lib/endorsed

fortunately, eclipse xsd has eliminated all dependencies on xerces, so it can be used with any jaxp implementation. as long as it is launched in this fashion, it should operate without hiccups.