java 8u31 plugin causes signed applets to load much slower

Question

i have noticed that signed applets are loaded much slower with the latest plugin (included in java 8u31 and 7u75). I have debugged the situation quite a lot and i found out that

Answer 1

Same here. I thought already I'm getting crazy. Thanks for sharing this.

We are using Java Web Start, but it's sharing the same problem of re-indexing all jar files (in our case it's an app with quite some jars, so starting takes ages).

Aside from the fact that Oracle suddenly decided to check the certificate of the deploy TLS, which caused some hickup on Linux and Macs (we used a StartSSL certificate there, which isn't included in the Java keystore - on Windows it works as it uses the platforms root certs, too).

And, to make it even worse, on Windows x86 the 8u31 silently dies if -XX:+DoEscapeAnalysis or -XX:+OptimizeStringConcat is present in the JVM arguments, though both parameters are standard in Java 8 (but not in 7, that's why they've been included, still). The 64bit engine doesn't have that problem.

The next thing they changed is they now overwrite the start icons if they've been changed (we changed them to put the 64bit engine's path in there), so it stubbornly changes the path back to the 32bit engine every time.

The behaviour of Oracle is not helpful at all, as they didn't announce any of these changes in their changelogs, let alone announcing the certs changes a few days ahead.

I would like to hear from anyone who's sharing the problems and possible workarounds.

Patric