Java: Finding/Setting JDK/$JAVA_HOME on Mac OS X
Java: Finding/Setting JDK/$JAVA_HOME on Mac OS X
Join the DZone community and get the full member experience.
Join For FreeAs long as I’ve been using a Mac I always understood that if you needed to set $JAVA_HOME for any program, it should be set to /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/CurrentJDK.
On my machine this points to the 1.6 JDK:
$ ls -alh /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/CurrentJDK /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/CurrentJDK -> /System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents
This was a bit surprising to me since I’ve actually got Java 7 installed on the machine as well so I’d assumed the symlink would have been changed:
$ java -version java version "1.7.0_09" Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0_09-b05) Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 23.5-b02, mixed mode)
Andres and I were looking at something around this yesterday and wanted to set $JAVA_HOME to the location of the 1.7 JDK on the system if it had been installed.
We eventually came across the following article which explains that you can use the /usr/libexec/java_homecommand line tool to do this.
For example, if we want to find where the 1.7 JDK is we could run the following:
$ /usr/libexec/java_home -v 1.7 /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.7.0_09.jdk/Contents/Home
And if we want 1.6 the following does the trick:
$ /usr/libexec/java_home -v 1.6 /System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home
We can also list all the JVMs installed on the machine:
$ /usr/libexec/java_home -V
Matching Java Virtual Machines (3):
1.7.0_09, x86_64:"Java SE 7"/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.7.0_09.jdk/Contents/Home
1.6.0_45-b06-451, x86_64:"Java SE 6"/System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home
1.6.0_45-b06-451, i386:"Java SE 6"/System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home
/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.7.0_09.jdk/Contents/Home
I’m not sure how I’ve never come across this command before but it seems pretty neat.
Like This Article? Read More From DZone
Published at DZone with permission of Mark Needham , DZone MVB. See the original article here.
Opinions expressed by DZone contributors are their own.
{{ parent.title || parent.header.title}}
{{ parent.tldr }}
{{ parent.linkDescription }}
{{ parent.urlSource.name }}