This isnt new.

Is Java even needed anymore?

I don't know why it was needed to begin with. Adding some more Mac people who might know.

I think Java is used for the closure compiler, but I didn't think that it was a requirement of a Chromium build. As far as I know, nothing else should require Java.

Do we use the closure compiler for tests? Would it be safe to try removing Java from the OS X image we throw onto new machines?

+dbeam for question about closure compiler

Depending on dbeam@'s response, I think it would be fine to try removing Java and seeing if anything breaks. Note that if you execute /usr/bin/java when Java is not installed, OS X will prompt you to install it.

Can we replace /usr/bin/java with a symlink to a program that always no-ops and returns a failure code? At some point, I expect someone to accidentally sneak in a usage of Java, and don't want it to go undetected.

some clarifications:

1) all closure compilation FYI/try bots I run are on Linux, but there may be remoting/ or ios/ things that run on Mac
2) the closure compilation infrastructure should handle a lack of `java` on the $PATH or various other situations and react appropriately, so feel free to throw whatever at it

I’m not aware of anything in our build that relies on Java, either the runtime or the toolchain.

followup clarification: nothing about closure compilation is required in the build toolchain; it's all optional (i.e. we also wouldn't be adding the requirement to have Java to build any web part of Chrome)

This has been fixed for a while.