How to re-compile Windchill Applets to a set version?

[PeterWigren]

Hello!

Does anyone happen to know how to re-compile Windchill Applets to a set version?

I know you can re-build Applets (and maybe some more stuff) using below command. Does this also compile them?

ant -f /ptc/Windchill/codebase/MakeJar.xml

If ant is used in the compilation process, it should be possible to change target version using below syntax:

<javac srcdir="${src.dir}" destdir="${compile.to}" target="1.6">

Have anyone tried this or experienced the same problem?

Best regards,

Peter

[jessh]

MakeJar.xml rebuilds jars from loose class, properties, etc, files.

It does not compile the jars from Java source code, nor are all the sources provided to do such.

More importantly, however, I'm unclear why you'd want to recompile them for a particular version.

• If the classes in the applet jars were originally compiled with an older Java version, then they will still work with a newer Java version. Any issues encountered running with a newer Java version are almost certainly not due to the Java version used to compile the classes being too old.
• If the classes in the applet jars were originally compiled with a newer Java version, then that newer Java version is the oldest version supported for that version of Windchill -- and you can't use an older Java version anyway.

--

Jess Holle

[PeterWigren]

Hello Jess!

Thanks for your reply!

Then I understand, MakeJar.xml is just a packaging tool.

I may have been a little unclear about my motives here so I will try to explain:

I'm working in a large company where changing Java version on all clients just because of a single project is very difficult. Currently the clients are equiped with Java 1.6 and will probably be at the time of the rollout of Windchill 10.2.

My train of thoughts are something like this:

* Applets have not really evolved since early 2000 (not the ones you find in Windchill anyways)

* Applets will be replaced in Windchill 10.2 M030 so PTC is probably not putting any effort in chaning them to much and since they worked in 10.0 with version 1.6 they will probably work with that version in 10.2 (if it was possible to change).

So my conclusion was that if we in some way could change the version the Java classes for the Applets were compiled in a major problem could be fixed since as you also noted that class-files compiled with an older version will work fine in a newer runtime. The Applets could however have dependencies wich makes such compilation not work.

I suppose we'll have to fix this on the client-side then...

Best regards,

Peter

[jessh]

Windchill 10.2 requires Java 7 for its applets as well as for running the server.

While the applets themselves have mostly not evolved much as of late, some of the classes they use make use of Java 7 language features and/or direct (non-reflective) use of Java 7 APIs. Moreover, all of Windchill 10.2 (apart from the wmx.jar bootstrapping jar) is compiled with a target version of 1.7 so that all classes therein can use Java 7 language features and APIs.

As for 10.2 M030, PTC is working to replace as many applets as possible in M030. This will not, however, be all applets. You are right in surmising that the remaining applets are unlikely to evolve much further at this point, though.

Publicly available security updates to Java 6 ended some time ago, so unless you're paying Oracle for support and updates, that means you probably want to move to Java 7 for security updates anyway.