In this article we will explorer how to install and manage multiple Java version on MacOS. For this purpose, we will use a well known Java Version Manager software called jEnv.
There are two Java releases
Feature | Oracle JDK | Open JDK |
Licensing | Commercial: Oracle Binary Code License Agreement | Open source: GNU GPL v 2 |
Release Cycle | Every three years (LTS) | Every three months |
Other Features | Flight Recorder Java Mission Control Application Class-Data Sharing Better Garbage Collection | Font Renderer |
Contributors | Oracle | Oracle Red Hat Azul Systems IBM Apple Inc. SAP AG |
We will use Homebrew (the package manager for MacOS) to install the required softwares, open a terminal and run following command to install homebrew on your Mac.
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install.sh)
Optional: Remove Existing Java
If you have any existing version of java installed on your machine, open terminal run following commands on you Mac.
sudo rm -rf /Library/Java/*
sudo rm -rf /Library/PreferencePanes/Java*
sudo rm -rf /Library/Internet\ Plug-Ins/Java*
We will make use of Homebrew Cask (homebrew package to install GUI based applications), cask package is included by default in latest versions of homebew so we not need to install it separately.
Install Java version manager: jEnv
jEnv, a well known Java Version Manager is a command line tool to manage multiple versions of java on your machine, behind the scenes it uses JAVA_HOME
environment variable to do this.
Open a terminal window and run following command to install jEnv on your Mac machine.
brew install jenv
Output of successful installation will be as following.
Updating Homebrew...
==> Auto-updated Homebrew!
Updated 1 tap (homebrew/cask).
==> Updated Casks
brave-browser
==> Downloading https://github.com/jenv/jenv/archive/0.5.4.tar.gz
==> Downloading from https://codeload.github.com/jenv/jenv/tar.gz/0.5.4
######################################################################## 100.0%
==> Caveats
To activate jenv, add the following to your ~/.profile:
export PATH="$HOME/.jenv/bin:$PATH"
eval "$(jenv init -)"
==> Summary
🍺 /usr/local/Cellar/jenv/0.5.4: 82 files, 72.1KB, built in 2 seconds
Now we have jEnv installed on our machine and will add following entries to shell configuration
. Location and name of the shell configuration may vary depending on the currently active shell on your Mac. If you look at the output from last section it actually has the reference to the target shell configuration file i,e. ~/.profile
. So let’s open it with nano
text editor.
sudo nano ~/.profile
Add following entries in ~/.profile
file, save and exit the editor using Ctrl + O
then ENTER
and Ctrl + X
then ENTER
key combination.
export PATH="$HOME/.jenv/bin:$PATH"
eval "$(jenv init -)"
jenv enable-plugin export
jenv enable-plugin maven
Now either restart the Terminal or type following command to reload the shell configurations.
source ~/.profile
Verify the installation of jEnv by running following command.
jenv doctor
Successful installation will produce output like following.
OK] No JAVA_HOME set
[ERROR] Java binary in path is not in the jenv shims.
[ERROR] Please check your path, or try using /path/to/java/home is not a valid path to java installation.
PATH : /usr/local/Cellar/jenv/0.5.4/libexec/libexec:/Users/u1/.jenv/shims:/Users/sma/.jenv/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin
[OK] Jenv is correctly loaded
We will activate AdoptOpenJDK tap to install specific version of Open JDK, to do this from terminal run following command.
brew tap AdoptOpenJDK/openjdk
Now let’s start with installing Java 8.
brew cask install adoptopenjdk8
Next install Open JDK version 11 using following command.
brew cask install adoptopenjdk11
For successful installation the output will be something like following.
Updating Homebrew...
==> Downloading https://github.com/AdoptOpenJDK/openjdk11-binaries/releases/down
Already downloaded: /Users/sma/Library/Caches/Homebrew/downloads/1d0d41e7cf8f14ebb4df0ff39fa16e0fe2a1ac85f05ae404c62841c6ff01d4c8--OpenJDK11U-jdk_x64_mac_hotspot_11.0.8_10.pkg
==> Verifying SHA-256 checksum for Cask 'adoptopenjdk11'.
==> Installing Cask adoptopenjdk11
==> Running installer for adoptopenjdk11; your password may be necessary.
==> Package installers may write to any location; options such as --appdir are i
installer: Package name is AdoptOpenJDK
installer: Upgrading at base path /
installer: The upgrade was successful.
package-id: net.adoptopenjdk.11.jdk
version: 11.0.8+10
volume: /
location: Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/adoptopenjdk-11.jdk
install-time: 1602892594
🍺 adoptopenjdk11 was successfully installed!
Let’s also install the latest available version of java using following command.
brew cask install adoptopenjdk
Configure JDK version with jEnv
Now we have Java 8, 11 and 15 (latest available version on publish date of this article) installed on our machine.
In this section will learn to configure current JDK version with the help of jEnv.
To enable jEnv switch between different java versions, we need to tel jEnv about all versions installed on our machine. Tun following command to get a list of all versions of java installed on your machine.
/usr/libexec/java_home -V
This will return list of all installed java versions as following.
Matching Java Virtual Machines (3):
15, x86_64: "AdoptOpenJDK 15" /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/adoptopenjdk-15.jdk/Contents/Home
11.0.8, x86_64: "AdoptOpenJDK 11" /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/adoptopenjdk-11.jdk/Contents/Home
1.8.0_265, x86_64: "AdoptOpenJDK 8" /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/adoptopenjdk-8.jdk/Contents/Home
/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/adoptopenjdk-15.jdk/Contents/Home
Now we will add each of the installed JDK to jEnv as following, please do remember to revise the commands according to path of versions installed on your machine.
jenv add /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/adoptopenjdk-15.jdk/Contents/Home
jenv add /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/adoptopenjdk-11.jdk/Contents/Home
jenv add /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/adoptopenjdk-8.jdk/Contents/Home
Let’s verify if all of the Java versions are now available to jEnv by running following command.
jenv versions
This will produce output like following.
* system (set by /Users/sma/.jenv/version)
1.8
1.8.0.265
11
11.0
11.0.8
15
openjdk64-1.8.0.265
openjdk64-11.0.8
openjdk64-15
Congratulations, you have setup jEnv successfully and can use it to manage your development environments easily.
Set global Java using jEnv
We can use following command to set global / system wide java version.
jenv global 15
Above command will set Java 15 as the system wide Java version, let’s verify it by running java -version command as following.
java -version
Following output confirms current java version as Java 15.
openjdk version "15" 2020-09-15
OpenJDK Runtime Environment AdoptOpenJDK (build 15+36)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM AdoptOpenJDK (build 15+36, mixed mode, sharing)
Let’s switch our global version to Java 8 by running following command.
jenv global 1.8
Let’s confirm the change by running following command.
java -version
And output confirms that now the global java version is Java 1.8.
openjdk version "1.8.0_265"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (AdoptOpenJDK)(build 1.8.0_265-b01)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (AdoptOpenJDK)(build 25.265-b01, mixed mode)
Set global Java using jEnv
Use following command to set project specific Java version, this will create a file named .java-version
and you can even commit this file in source control to share it with team.
jenv local 15
Set Shell specific Java using jEnv
We can set Java version for currently opened shell using following command.
jenv shell 11