Home/ Questions/Q 53033
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-10T17:00:00+00:00

Here is the directory layout that was installed with Leopard. What is the A

  • 0

Here is the directory layout that was installed with Leopard. What is the ‘A’ directory and why the ‘Current’ directory in addition to the ‘CurrentJDK’?

It seems like you can easily switch the current JDK by move the CurrentJDK link, but then the contents under Current and A will be out of sync.

 lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel    5 Jun 14 15:49 1.3 -> 1.3.1 drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel  102 Jan 14  2008 1.3.1 lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel    5 Feb 21  2008 1.4 -> 1.4.2 lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel    3 Jun 14 15:49 1.4.1 -> 1.4 drwxr-xr-x  8 root  wheel  272 Feb 21  2008 1.4.2 lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel    5 Feb 21  2008 1.5 -> 1.5.0 drwxr-xr-x  8 root  wheel  272 Feb 21  2008 1.5.0 lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel    5 Jun 14 15:49 1.6 -> 1.6.0 drwxr-xr-x  8 root  wheel  272 Jun 14 15:49 1.6.0 drwxr-xr-x  8 root  wheel  272 Jun 14 15:49 A lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel    1 Jun 14 15:49 Current -> A lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel    3 Jun 14 15:49 CurrentJDK -> 1.5 steve-mbp /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions $

and the contents of A

 -rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel    1925 Feb 29  2008 CodeResources drwxr-xr-x  34 root  wheel    1156 Jun 14 15:49 Commands drwxr-xr-x   3 root  wheel     102 Mar  6  2008 Frameworks drwxr-xr-x  16 root  wheel     544 Jun 14 15:49 Headers -rwxr-xr-x   1 root  wheel  236080 Feb 29  2008 JavaVM drwxr-xr-x  29 root  wheel     986 Jun 14 15:49 Resources steve-mbp /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/A $
Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. The (A, Current symbolic-linked to A) is part of the structure of a Mac OS X framework, which JavaVM.framework is. This framework may have C or Objective-C code in it, in addition to the actual JVM installations. Thus it could potentially be linked against from some C or Objective-C code in addition to containing the JVM alongside that.

    Note that you should not change the CurrentJDK link to point at anything but what it is set to by Mac OS X. Unlike on other platforms, the Java virtual machine is an operating system service on Mac OS X, and changing it in this way would put you in an unsupported (and potentially untested, unstable, etc.) configuration.

    • 0