OpenJDK security updates Jun’17

For all lovers and haters of Java: new releases are available for OpenJDK versions 7 as well as 8. On the blog of release manager Andrew Hughes (aka GNU/Andrew) you can find announcements for IcedTea 2.6.10 (which builds OpenJDK 7) and 3.4.0 (which builds OpenJDK 8). The new OpenJDK 7 and 8 releases include the official April 2017 security fixes.

You may think what you want about Java, but it is an important piece of software tech and ubiquitous, so I will keep releasing Slackware packages for as long as I can. My package support goes back to Slackware 13.37 which is the oldest release I personally recommend – if you are using an even older release, it’s probably because your hardware is very old or weak… in that case, you do not want to use something like Java anyway.

Here is where you can download the Slackware packages:

• http://www.slackware.com/~alien/slackbuilds/openjdk7/
  and http://www.slackware.com/~alien/slackbuilds/openjdk/
• http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/people/alien/slackbuilds/openjdk7/
  and http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/people/alien/slackbuilds/openjdk/
  (rsync also available: rsync://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/people/alien/slackbuilds/)

The “rhino” package (implementation of the JavaScript engine used by OpenJDK) is an external dependency for OpenJDK 7, you can find a package in my repository. It is not needed for OpenJDK 8 because that contains its own internal implementation of a JavaScript engine, called Nashorn.

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.

Have fun! Eric