Oracle account required now for JDK download

It’s now necessary to sign up with Oracle in order to download the Java SE Development Kit. Does anyone have experience with this? What company name did you use? We are preparing a SAB workshop an it’s a bit awkward to have all participants sign up with Oracle when they install SAB. I suppose it would be okay to just pass the JDK installation file around…

@Friedo,

I have been concerned about this as well. On Linux, we use OpenJDK. However, I have not seen much usage of OpenJDK on Windows or Mac (since Oracle JDK was easily available). Now, that has changed. I tried using OpenJDK 8 from RedHat on Windows, but it was mission JavaFX which is a dependency of SAB and is included in Oracle JDK 8.

Looking through the RedHat forums today, I stumbled on Amazon Corretto which is:

Corretto is a build of the Open Java Development Kit (OpenJDK) with long-term support from Amazon. Corretto is certified using the Java Technical Compatibility Kit (TCK) to ensure it meets the Java SE standard and is available on Linux, Windows, and macOS. It includes patches from Amazon that have proven useful in running our own services.

Amazon Corretto has been GA (generally available) since January 31, 2019.

I installed Corretto on a Windows machine and associated .jar with "c:\Program Files\path\to\bin\javaw.exe" -jar "%1". (I am not sure if the install would have done the file association, but I can accidentally associated it earlier to something else). SAB didn’t start at first. but I found out from running it from the command-line (and looking at the code causing the crash), that it was looking for the JDK_HOME environment variable. So Oracle JDK must have set that. I set JDK_HOME=%JAVA_HOME% in the environment variables and was able to launch SAB and build an app.

@richard and @mcquayi, I think we should look at depending on Amazon Corretto for the build and officially supporting it as the preferred JDK due to Oracle’s change in the licensing of Java.

Thanks,
Chris

Thanks for posting this @Friedo. I ran into it as well. I just signed up with a throwaway email account and it was fine. The SIL “langtran” distribution system hosts JDK installers here if you need a workaround (I can’t post links in this forum yet, just add the “.”): files lingtransoft info/Android_dev_win/Java_SE_Development_Kit/. Thanks @ChrisHubbard for looking into alternatives.

Thanks for your help, Chris and vanderling. I guess it’s not a BIG deal to sign up with Oracle but I didn’t read the small print and I’m not sure if we are actually allowed to use it for our purposes…

I have added information about installing Corretto Java on the http://software.sil.org/scriptureappbuilder/resources/how-to-install/ page.

But it is not in the PDF yet.

It is working for me. :smile:

I noticed that the install SDK section of that page doesn’t mention the “copy from another user” option. Should you include that on this page? That’s the way that we generally encourage in our Internet-challenged part of the world.

Please see post Oracle Changed License for Java SE 8 ... you must decide what to do for more information on using Oracle Java SE vs. Amazon Corretto (which is a distribution of OpenJDK).

@jeff_heath, I think this install page should point people to the full documentation.

Chris

Sorry I completely changed the topic of the thread - I was talking about the SDK (copy folder method), NOT the JDK. But I just noticed the oversight in the instructions on the web page, and didn’t know where to mention it. My apologies…