Re: st: Stata 13/12 for Mac and Mavericks

[Sergiy Radyakin <serjradyakin@gmail.com>]

For the record, this is the best informative message that I've seen
for a while of exactly the kind I am paying attention to (despite not
being a Mac user). It gives the users an advance warning of a
potential problem, describes the problem itself, and describes the
areas possibly affected. I really love the way it is written. Thank
you, Chinh. I wish there were more messages like this from StataCorp
(but not more of the bugs of course).

Now I just wonder whether both Apple and Oracle pointed at each other?
or both admitted the bug as their own?    :)

Best, Sergiy


On Thu, Oct 24, 2013 at 4:10 PM,  <cnguyen@stata.com> wrote:
> We have been receiving questions about whether Stata 13 (and Stata 12) are
> compatible with the latest Mac OS X, "Mavericks".
>
> The short answer is yes, with the caveat that we are releasing an update to
> Stata 13 next week to work around a bug which is either in Mavericks or in
> Java when run on Mavericks.  It makes us feel better to know that the bug
> isn't in Stata, but it can affect Stata nonetheless, so we are finalizing a
> workaround.  Stata 12 is not affected by this.
>
> Let me provide a few more details on this bug for those interested.  As I
> said, the bug is either in Mavericks or in Java on Mavericks.  When a C
> program like Stata invokes Java code on Mavericks, the size of the memory
> "stack" available to the C program is changed when it should not change.  This
> can lead to a future crash.  We have reached out to both Apple and Oracle to
> report this interaction between their products, but neither has yet released a
> fix although they have both are aware of the issue.
>
> Only a few features in Stata 13 use Java, namely the Project Manager, the GUI
> for the -power- command, the -import delimited- command and GUI, https and ftp
> protocols (regular http is not affected), and the Mata _docx*() functions.  To
> trigger the bug, you have to first use one of those features yet you may still
> not encounter the bug.  If you don't use one of the above features, or you are
> using Stata 12, there is no chance of the bug affecting you.
>
> -Chinh Nguyen
>  cnguyen@stata.com
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