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  • Notes 9.0.1 64 bit for Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan now available - warning our customers NOT to update for 30+ days!

    Karsten Lehmann  29 September 2015 10:30:06
    One day before the general availability of Mac OS X 10.11 (El Capitan), IBM released an update for their IBM Notes Client 9.0.1 with 64 bit support:
    http://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?subtype=ca&infotype=an&appname=iSource&supplier=877&letternum=ENUSZP15-0483

    Previous versions were using Java 1.6 32 Bit under the hood, which was maintained by Apple for the last 7 years. Since Apple dropped support for Java 1.6 in OS X 10.11, IBM had to update their IBM Mac Notes Client to work with newer JVMs (1.7 and 1.8 are maintained by Oracle and are only available with 64 Bit).

    Unfortunately we now have to warn our customers not to update their OS X version and Notes environment for at least 30 days.


    The reason is that IBM will release the C API toolkit 30 days after the Notes Client availability, as mentioned in this Q&A page:

    NOTE: If you are running applications that make use of the Notes C API Toolkit, then you must recompile those application with the new 64-bit Mac API Toolkit, which is expected to be available approximately 30 days after Notes 9.0.1 64-bit ships. This technote will be updated when the C API Toolkit is available.


    Since the applications that we maintain on OS X for customers (such as MindPlan or individual Notes Client add ons) contain native code, they need to be recompiled for 64 Bit, otherwise they will no longer work after the OS X update.

    We are asking IBM dev for a beta version of the C API toolkit to speed up this application update process, but have not received a positive response yet.


    BTW: It looks like there are no plans to move the Windows Notes Client to 64 bit. However, for Notes 9.0.2 it is planned to ship it with IBM's JVM version 1.8. IBM will announce their release plan for 9.0.2 in January at IBM Connect.

    Update:
    Looks like there is Java 6 support in El Capitan and the old 32 bit Notes Client is still working. See the comments for details.

    Comments

    1Karsten Lehmann  30.09.2015 07:20:06  Notes 9.0.1 64 bit for Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan now available - warning our customers NOT to update for 30+ days!

    Until IBM has released the C API toolkit, it is possible to use the C API from Java's JNA.

    We already created a proove of concept yesterday where we ported an existing library to read view data with very high performance to Mac 64 bit Notes (NIFReadEntries API method). The code was already running successfully against 32 and 64 bit on Windows and Linux before and could be ported without changing a line of code.

    2Karsten Lehmann  30.09.2015 07:39:23  Notes 9.0.1 64 bit for Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan now available - warning our customers NOT to update for 30+ days!

    Unfortunately, only a small part of our code base is using JNA (the newer parts). Most of it is using JNI with compiled native library files.

    Native API methods that we are using in our code, because they don't exist in Java, are too slow or less powerful:

    -read available databases on servers (MUCH faster for many databases)

    -replicate databases (more powerful with progress callback and can be stopped)

    -sending break signal to long running processes like searches (does not exist in Java API)

    -reading view data (in earlier Notes versions MUCH faster for all data, today only for ft search results)

    -conversion of richtext to HTML with embedded images (more powerful)

    -extraction of document attachments (more powerful, data can be streamed and is not extracted to temp folders internally like in the Java API)

    -DXL exports/imports (more powerful, data can be streamed AFAIK remember)

    3Karsten Lehmann  02.10.2015 10:16:19  Notes 9.0.1 64 bit for Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan now available - warning our customers NOT to update for 30+ days!

    It's even more complicated...

    It's not true that there is no Java 6 support in El Capitan. Java 6 can be downloaded here:

    https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1572?locale=en_US

    That JVM still supports 32 bit mode, so the OLD 32 bit Notes Client should work fine with Java 6 and El Capitan and our plugins and applications should too.

    So my warning is only for the 64 bit Notes Client.

    Now we have a total mess. New Java 1.8 features can only be used in 64 bit Notes 9.0.1 on the Mac (e.g. in Java agents or Eclipse plugins). When customers use 32 bit Notes, code can only be Java 1.6 compatible.

    This will be a lot of fun for testing, as we already found incompatibilities between Java 6 and Java 7, e.g.:

    { Link }

    4Doug Ragan  04.12.2015 16:45:32  Notes 9.0.1 64 bit for Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan now available - warning our customers NOT to update for 30+ days!

    Is this realeased? Unfortunately we did not get the message not to upgrade and I am not able to use lotus notes.

    5Karsten Lehmann  04.12.2015 16:51:28  Notes 9.0.1 64 bit for Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan now available - warning our customers NOT to update for 30+ days!

    Yes, Notes with 64 bit is released and is available through IBM partnerworld or other channels.

    To get Notes with 32 bit running on El Capitan, you can install the Java 6 JDK from here:

    https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1572?locale=en_US

    6Michael Herman  24.02.2016 16:32:49  Notes 9.0.1 64 bit for Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan now available - warning our customers NOT to update for 30+ days!

    Has anyone been able to get Notes 9.0.1 (64 bit) running from within Eclipse (64 bit) on El Capitan ?

    I have a Notes plugin that uses SWT and needs to be compiled 64 bit and I'm having a tough time getting the Eclipse environment setup.

    Any suggestions are appreciated.