Can Java 7 and Java 8 co-exist on OSX

Question

I've installed Java 8 for development purposes but now I'd like to use Java 7 again.

How do I do this?

It seems to be insanely difficult.

Many thanks in advance. (I've tried using guigarage and that doesn't work)

Answer 1

From a terminal: export JAVA_HOME=`/usr/libexec/java_home -v 1.x`, where x is the Java version.

I personally have a shell function that does that for me:

use-java () {
    export JAVA_HOME=`/usr/libexec/java_home -v 1.$1`
}

I just have to call use-java 7 or use-java 8 in order to change my current shell's Java version.