OpenJDK 8 security round-up for July ’17

Sooner than I anticipated, there is an update for OpenJDK 8. Andrew Hughes (aka GNU/Andrew) announced the release of IcedTea 3.5.0. The new icedtea framework compiles OpenJDK 8 Update 141 Build 15 (8u141_b15). This release includes the official July 2017 security fixes.

No external dependency is required for OpenJDK 8 . But if you use Java in your web browser (a dying art) you’ll need the icedtea-web browser plugin. Coincidentally, a new release for that became available a few days ago, therefore I also built packages for the plugin.

The packages that I just uploaded are for Slackware 13.37 and newer. Here is where you can download them:

• http://www.slackware.com/~alien/slackbuilds/openjdk/
  and http://www.slackware.com/~alien/slackbuilds/icedtea-web/
• http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/people/alien/slackbuilds/openjdk/
  and http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/people/alien/slackbuilds/icedtea-web/
  (rsync also available: rsync://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/people/alien/slackbuilds/)

Note about usage:

My Java 7 and Java 8 packages (e.g. openjdk7 and openjdk… or openjre7 and openjre) can not co-exist on your computer because they use the same installation directory. You must install either Java 7 or Java 8.

Remember that I release packages for the JRE (runtime environment) and the JDK (development kit) simultaneously, but you only need to install one of the two. The JRE is sufficient if you only want to run Java programs (including Java web plugins). Only in case where you’d want to develop Java programs and need a Java compiler, you are in need of the JDK package.

Plugin support in Web Browsers:

If you want to use Java in a web browser then you’ll have to install my icedtea-web package too. Oracle’s JDK contains a browser plugin, but that one is closed-source. Therefore Icedtea offers an open source variant which does a decent job.

Note that icedtea-web is a NPAPI plugin – this prevents the use of Java in Chrome & Chromium because those browsers only support PPAPI plugins. Formally, Mozilla have also ceased to support the NPAPI plugins. For instance Firefox 52 and newer does not support NPAPI plugins, although Firefox ESR 52 still supports them. If you can’t do without, then you can use Java plugins with the Pale Moon browser, which is based on an older Firefox codebase and maintained independently. Get my package here (it has ffmpeg as an external dependency): http://www.slackware.com/~alien/slackbuilds/palemoon/

Have fun! Eric