Luckily enough MacOSX (Lion or previous flavors) have still lots of important tools for java development, integrated and ready to use. The main 3 tools usually needed are the following.
- Java (of course) – it is not pre installed by default. All you need to do is open the Terminal.app and type something like java -version. Then a pop-up will appear asking you to install the latest available run time (at the time being is still Java 6)
- Apache Ant – is already pre-installed! (1.8.2 at the time being – Lion 10.7.1)
- Apache Maven – is already pre- installed. (3.0.3 at the time being – Lion 10.7.1)
So all the basic tools are there – all you need to do is set-up the enviroment by defining the HOME variables usually needed by other tools like IDE, app servers etc.
All you have to do is create a special file on your home folder and use some basic script commands like export – to indicate the paths of the tools. Really easy.
1.Go to your home folder, that would be something like
cd \Users\yourUserName
In my system that would be
cd \Users\papo
2.Create a new file using vi or vim (or whatever you like) with the following command
vi .profile
3.Using (vim) in the file – just add the following lines
export JAVA_HOME=/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Home export ANT_HOME=/usr/share/ant/ export MAVEN_HOME=/usr/share/maven/
4.Save the file (vi -> press Esc and :w) (see vi basic commands here)
5.Ready, open a new Terminal tab or window and test if your enviroment variables are all set by typing
echo $JAVA_HOME echo $ANT_HOME echo $MAVEN_HOME
This is it your enviroment variables are ready, MacOSX has already integrated Java, Ant and Maven executables to the system path.
Notes:
Some paths may change in the future – you can always check where each tool is pre-installed by using the ‘which‘ and ‘ls -al’ command.
So if you are wondering where Ant has gone just type the following
which ant
Which is going to return something like /usr/bin/ant
Then just use the path above and use ls to see the real path of the symbolic link
ls -al /usr/bin/ant
This is going to return something like 22 Jul 30 19:38 /usr/bin/ant /usr/share/ant/bin/ant
Hope that helps! Enjoy!
Reference: Setup JAVA_HOME, MAVEN_HOME, ANT_HOME in MacOSX Lion in 5 minutes from our JCG partner Paris Apostolopoulos at the Papo’s log blog.
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