Bug 365914

Description Curtis Windatt 2011-12-07 10:39:16 EST

Cloned to backport to 3.7.2 where the isVisible() call is still used.

+++ This bug was initially created as a clone of Bug #365661 +++

Build Id: 4.2 I20111205-0805

Apologies if I'm missing something here, but I thought that, providing I had definitions for my various Executable Environments installed (Preferences > Plug-in Development > API Errors/Warnings), that those definitions were used to validate system library usage without needing a corresponding JRE to be installed.  But this does not seem to be the case.

In my situation, I had a plugin with BREE set to J2SE-1.5, but I only had a Java6 JDK.  I was was inadvertently using Java6's String#isEmpty() with no errors, despite that my "Invalid references to execution environments" was set to an error.

My expectation was based on Ankur Sharma's blog [1]

   Another major difference is that API Tooling does not need JRE/JDK.
   It checks the usage against the environment descriptions. The
   descriptions are just the environment API and thus occupy very
   less space. For example, the 1.5 JRE takes close to 50MB while the
   descriptions for the same takes less than 2 MB.

And the brief discussion on bugs 213027 and 253693 makes no mention of requiring a matching JRE to be installed.

Is this a regression?  Or a deliberate change?  I noticed the screenshots have changed since Ankur's blog entry which referenced "Invalid references to system libraries".

I bring this up as although I was able to find and install a J2SE 1.5 JRE to enable the check, it was somewhat difficult to find and install (Apple only supports Java6 JVMs now).  I don't think I could find a working 1.4 JVM, let alone a 1.3 JVM if that was required.  And JDT's Installed JREs dialog is rather unforgiving if the JRE directory layout doesn't meet its expectations.

[1] http://blog.ankursharma.org/2009/07/system-library-validation_17.html