Over the weekend I finally took the plunge to upgrade to Snow Leopard. The system is definitely snappy and I'm loving it. Well, now that the system is back at the state I need it to be in for my various development efforts, I began trying to compile some Java that's used at work, which requires Java 1.5.x (The reason for this is the use of pre-JDBC 4.0 APIs) So I start compiling and I keep getting errors about classes not being abstract and also not implementing necessary methods. I start thinking: Well, I told the build script to use Java 1.5 so I shouldn't be running into this. I start digging around and I see that Java 1.5 and Java 1.5.0 JavaVM framworks on Snow Leopard just symlink to 1.6. WHAT?!? Are you eff-ing serious? Not only is Java 1.5 not installed but Snow Leopard tries to fool you into thinking it is. (Yes, I know I could had looked at /Applications/Utilities/Java Preferences.app and figured this out but being a developer, I look for framework locations manually.) No wonder my code isn't compiling...it needs Java 1.5 and while it appears I told my build script to use 1.5.x, it's really using 1.6.x. Great...

I'm not going to attempt to document how to fix this. Many others have done so and googling "Snow Leopard Java 1.5" will get you what you want. I just can't believe this is the way Apple wants to behave. Why can't the latest Xcode include a *real* version of Java 1.5 at least? Ugh...EPIC FAIL!!!