edureka!

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1. Mac OSX 10.5 or later

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/1.7.0.jdk/Contents/Home

Why /usr/libexec/java_home?

This java_home can return the Java version specified in Java Preferences for the current user. For examples,

/usr/libexec/java_home -V
Matching Java Virtual Machines (3):
    1.7.0_05, x86_64:    "Java SE 7"    /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.7.0.jdk/Contents/Home
    1.6.0_41-b02-445, x86_64:    "Java SE 6"    /System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home
    1.6.0_41-b02-445, i386:    "Java SE 6"    /System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home


This Mac OSX has three JDK installed.

##return top Java version

$ /usr/libexec/java_home
/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.7.0.jdk/Contents/Home

##  want Java version 1.6

$ /usr/libexec/java_home -v 1.6
/System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home



2. Older Mac OSX

For older Mac OSX, the /usr/libexec/java_home doesn’t exists, so, you should set JAVA_HOME to the fixed path :


$ vim .bash_profile

export JAVA_HOME=/System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home

$ source .bash_profile

$ echo $JAVA_HOME
/System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home

Please let me know if you have any further issue regarding this.

Feel free to contact us in case you have any other query.