TIL about whichjdk.com when I was setting up my macbook. I don’t usually use Java much (had enough of it back in the day), but a few apps/tools still need it.
TL;DR: Consider installing temurin instead of openjdk.
How it started #
A couple of tools I use occasionally (FreeMind and PlantUML which I won’t link because the main site is an ad-littered hellhole) were written in java so I need to install a JRE/JDK every few years.
brew search openj gave me a surprising response:
❯ brew search openj
==> Formulae
open-jtalk openjazz openjdk@11 openjdk@21 openjpeg openfa opencv openvi
openj9 openjdk openjdk@17 openjdk@8 openjph opensc opencc
==> Casks
adoptopenjdk microsoft-openjdk@11 microsoft-openjdk@21 openlp openra
microsoft-openjdk microsoft-openjdk@17 openhv openmw
OpenJDK is still there as a formula (nice!), but I was unfamiliar with adoptopenjdk and microsoft-openjdk.
This took me down a bit of a rabbit-hole, where I learned adoptopenjdk became Adoptium and is
now released as Temurin under the Eclipse Foundation.
Given the proliferation of JDK builds, I was relieved to find whichjdk.com as it provides some helpful recommendations and details on many of the available JDK offerings.
How it’s going #
I’m happy to report that brew install temurin@11 was able to run Freemind 1.0.1 (from 2014)
which was able to open a Freemind 0.8 mindmap from 2008. 17 years of backwards compatibility is
pretty good.