JNI on Mac OS X

JNI (Java Native Interface) is a way to use native (read "C") functions in your Java program. You can read more details about this approach at Sun Java Web Site.

A particular problem I was struggling with is how the libraries are loaded when running on Mac OS X. The standard naming convention for using the dynamic libraries in Mac OS X is to use "lib" prefix, and ".dylib" as the suffix. Java Virtual Machine, however, does not follow this convention when trying to load a library, and requires you to use ".jnilib" suffix (and "lib" prefix) instead.

The typical loadLibrary call:
System.loadLibrary("mine");
will search for libmine.jnilib in your java.library.path; and if you have named your library libmine.dylib, it will produce you an UnsatisfiedLinkError exception.