Installing java on Mac

The information of this post was learnt from this StackOverflow post and also David Cai’s blog post on how to install multiple Java version on Mac OS High Sierra.

With brew cask installed on Mac (see homebrew-cask instructions), different versions of java can be installed via the command (I want to install java9 here, for example):

brew tap caskroom/versions
brew cask install java9

After installing, the symlink /usr/bin/java is still pointing to the old native Java. You can check where it points to with the command ls -la /usr/bin/java. It is probably pointing to the old native java path: /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/Current/Commands/java .

However, homebrew installed java into the directory /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdkx.x.x_xxx.jdk/Contents/Home.

To easily switch between different java environments, you can use jEnv. The installing instructions can be found on jEnv’s official page.