Setting the Path on Macs

[Kira Summerton]

Okay, so i am really new to Java. I am teaching myself and i cannot figure out how to set my PATH. I am using Head First Java and would really appreciate some help on where and how to insert the % javac on my Mac.

Thanks!

[Andrew Monkhouse]

You should not need to do anything manually - Macintosh OS/X comes with Java pre-installed.

Open up the Terminal application, and type java -version You should see a response that indicates what version of Java is running by default on your Mac.

[Mark Spritzler]

But for future reference for setting OS environment variables. (this includes PATH)

Mac OS is based on Unix, so the way you do environment variables are different from windows. You can use your .profile file in your user's home directory, or you can create them directly on the command line for the length that the terminal window is open.

In all cases it is a matter or using EXPORT

EXPORT my_var=someValue

for example this is part of my .profile file

export JAVA_HOME=/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/CurrentJDK/Home
export ROO_HOME=~/Java/springsource/spring-roo-1.1.0.M1
export ROO_OPTS="-Droo.bright=true"
export SEAM_HOME=~/Java/Seam20/seam
export GROOVY_HOME=~/Java/springsource/groovy-1.7.10
export GRAILS_HOME=~/Java/springsource/grails-1.3.1
export POSTGRES_HOME=~/Java/Postgres
export MAVEN_SITE=~/Java/Disney/SEATS_2.2_cc/Availability/Avail_Seats/site
export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$ROO_HOME/bin:$GRAILS_HOME/bin:$SEAM_HOME:$POSTGRES_HOME/bin:$GROOVY_HOME/bin:$PATH

Hope that helps

Mark