How to install a specific JDK on Mac OS X?

Question

I want to install a specific JDK (the latest for example). For this, I went to the JDK download homepage: http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp. I looked for a Mac

Answer 1

Compiling with -source 1.5 -target 1.5 (in a JDK 6 environment) will honor only language elements that were in 1.5 and prior. Great. But there were no language changes in 6 anyway. Problem with this approach (on Mac with 1.6) is that using classes that came AFTER 1.5 will still compile because they exist in the rt.jar. So one could run in a 1.5 env and get a class not found exception with no prior warning when compiling. I found this out the hard way with javax.swing.event.RowSorterEvent/Listener. Both entered "Since 1.6" but are not caught with -source 1.5