There’s a lot going on with Java at the moment. Oracle acquires Sun, putting the language in squarely in hands that don’t inspire trust; the same thing happened with MySQL. Meanwhile, the Apache Software Foundation quits the Java SE/EE Executive Committee. And now Apple deprecates Java, and the reason doesn’t appear to be what you’d think.
Starting with OS X 10.6.3 update, developers got caught in the back lash. Things moved on the file system.
Upgrading IntelliJ, the IDE was asking me where my JDK was, as it certainly wasn’t where the software, or I, thought it should be.
You won’t find the location using /Applications/Utilities/Java Preferences.app.
But you can find it with some digging. Thanks to this developer release note from Apple, the following command from Terminal will spew out some XML.
$ /usr/libexec/java_home –xml
Find the dictionary section that has ‘x86_64’ in it, and you’ll find an entry that has a ‘JVMHomePath’ with something like:
/System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home
You want to provide this full path to the IDE as where the JDK lives.
It’s worth pointing out that Apple recommends that if you install any 3rd party JVMs they should be installed in /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines or ~/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines.