Setting Up A MacBook Pro for Java Development

Well, I went to the “dark” side and acquired a MacBook Pro to use it for development when I am not at my PC. This post should be viewed as an enhanced bookmark where I list the tools I had to install so that the MacBook will fulfil its purpose, namely to be used for Java and later for Javascript development.

I need to mention that until now I’ve been a user of Windows (XP/7) and Linux (Ubuntu/Mint/Cent OS). At the time of this writing, my MacBook Pro runs on OS X Yosemite Version 10.10.5

JDK

So first things first. Install a Java Development Kit (JDK), which is a software development environment used for developing Java applications and applets. It includes the Java Runtime Environment (JRE), an interpreter/loader (java), a compiler (javac), an archiver (jar), a documentation generator (javadoc) and other tools needed in Java development.

Download the Mac OS X x64 .dmg files version

• Java 7
• Java 8

You can find out where the JDK is installed, by executing the /usr/libexec/java_home -v 1.7 , on the terminal command:

Adrians-MacBook-Pro:ama ama$ /usr/libexec/java_home -v 1.8
/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0_65.jdk/Contents/Home
Adrians-MacBook-Pro:ama ama$ /usr/libexec/java_home -v 1.7
/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.7.0_79.jdk/Contents/Home
Adrians-MacBook-Pro:ama ama$

You will need to know this when setting up a project in IntelliJ for example.

Set JAVA_HOME

JAVA_HOME is just a convention, usually used by Tomcat, other Java EE app servers and build tools such as Maven to find where Java lives.

In Mac OSX 10.5 or later, Apple recommends to set the $JAVA_HOME variable to /usr/libexec/java_home, just export $JAVA_HOME in file ~/. bash_profile or ~/.profile

$ vim .bash_profile 

export JAVA_HOME=$(/usr/libexec/java_home)

$ source .bash_profile

$ echo $JAVA_HOME
/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0_65.jdk/Contents/Home

Maven

Once you have set up the JAVA_HOME environment variable as specified above, go to the Apache Maven Downloads website, download the .tar.gz or .zip archive and unpack it in a folder of your choice – I put it under the /opt directory:

tar xzvf apache-maven-3.3.3-bin.tar.gz

It is also recommended to create a symbolic link to the Maven installation, so that when let’s say you update your Maven version,  you’ll only have to change the symbolic link target:

ln -s /opt/apache-maven-3.3.3 /opt/maven

Then set Maven in the environment variables

vim ~/.bash_profile

export M2_HOME=/path/to/maven
export M2=$M2_HOME/bin
export PATH=$M2:$PATH

Close the terminal and open a new one. When you try now to get the maven versioning you should get something like the following:

ama$ mvn -version
Apache Maven 3.3.3 (7994120775791599e205a5524ec3e0dfe41d4a06; 2015-04-22T13:57:37+02:00)
Maven home: /opt/maven
Java version: 1.8.0_65, vendor: Oracle Corporation
Java home: /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0_65.jdk/Contents/Home/jre
Default locale: en_US, platform encoding: UTF-8
OS name: "mac os x", version: "10.10.5", arch: "x86_64", family: "mac"

An alternative is to use Homebrew and execute the following command:

brew install maven

Git

Open a terminal window and type the following command for example:

$ git --version

At the next moment you will be asekd to install Xcode. This is the a complete developer toolset for building apps that run on Apple TV, Apple Watch, iPhone, iPad, and Mac. It includes the Xcode IDE, simulators, and all the required tools and frameworks to build apps for iOS, watchOS, tvOS, and OS X (it also contains GNU Compiler Collection-gcc).

You can do the above, but if you do not want everything from that package you can install Homebrew (“Homebrew installs the stuff you need that Apple didn’t.”) and run the following commands:

brew install gcc
brew install git

Either way once Git is installed the initial command git –version will bring the installed version:

$ git --version
git version 2.4.9 (Apple Git-60)

If you are working with Github, I recommend you also install the Github Desktop

IntelliJ

In the mean time IntelliJ has become my favorite IDE, mainly because you have almost the same feature support when doing front-end development. To install it, go to the download page and follow the installation instructions:

INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS

• Download the idea-15.dmg OS X Disk Image file.
• Mount it as another disk in your system.
• Copy IntelliJ IDEA to your Applications folder

Extras

NodeJS

Node.js® is a JavaScript runtime built on Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine. Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient. Node.js’ package ecosystem, npm, is the largest ecosystem of open source libraries in the world. Recently is a must have tool if you need to do fancier stuff on your front-end part of your application.

Go to https://nodejs.org/ and download the latest version for OS X (x64). Double click on the node-v4.2.2.pkg file (latest stable version at the writing of the post) and follow the installation instructions steps.

When ready open a terminal window and check the version installed to see if it is working:

$ node --version
v4.2.2

Terminal Window

Set background black

Open Terminal, then go to the Terminal menu -> Preferences, choose the Settings tab and set the Pro theme as the default.

To quickly test that everything works I generated a

Often Used UNIX Keys on the German/Swiss Keyboard

I bought the Mac Book to use it as developer machine on the go and one of my initial surprises was the missing of some keys a developer/terminal user uses pretty often like []|{}~

So here it is, my personal keyboard map reminder for the Mac OS X:

How to Test Everything is Working

A smoke test to verify if everything installed is functioning properly “together” is to generate an application with JHipster and push it to git repository.

JHipster is a Yeoman generator, used to create a Spring Boot + AngularJS project.

If you have any suggestions please leave a comment. Thank you.