JAVA_HOME error on “ionic build android”

Question

I am trying to build an Ionic application with ionic build android with no success. I looked around answers in stackoverflow but I can seem to have the same situation.

I get the following error:

ANDROID_HOME=/Users/myuserID/development/android-sdk-macosx  
 JAVA_HOME=/Users/myuserID/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0_71.jdk/Co>nten
ts/home
Running:     
>/Users/myuserID/development/ionic/keepdoing/platforms/android/gradlew 
cdvBuildDebug -b 
/Users/myuserID/development/ionic/keepdoing/platforms/android/build.gradle - 
Dorg.gradle.daemon=true

ERROR: JAVA_HOME is set to an invalid directory:     
/Users/myuserID/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0_71.jdk/Contents/hom>e

Please set the JAVA_HOME variable in your environment to match the
location of your Java installation.

I have everything set in the .bash_profile:

export PATH=$PATH:/Users/myuserID/development/android-sdk-macosx/platform-    
tools
export PATH=$PATH:/Users/myuserID/development/android-sdk-macosx/tools
export ANDROID_HOME="/Users/myuserID/development/android-sdk-macosx"
export    
JAVA_HOME="/Users/myuserID/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0_71.jdk
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/share/npm/bin
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/npm/bin
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/lib/node_modules/cordova/
export      
PATH=$PATH:/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0_71.jdk/Contents/home/bin
export PATH=$PATH:/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0_71.jdk

But can't resolve this. Re-installed the android SDK to no avail.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

A recent update to Android Studio should help anyone landing on this question in 2017! Android Studio 2.2+ comes bundled with a custom OpenJDK build, so there's no need to download a separate JDK.

The following are the adjusted instructions available at https://ionicframework.com/docs/developer-resources/platform-setup/mac-setup.html using the new locations bundled with Android Studio app.

Create and open the .bash_profile file in your favourite text editor:

touch ~/.bash_profile
open -a TextEdit ~/.bash_profile`

Populate the file with:

export JAVA_HOME=/Applications/Android\ Studio.app/Contents/jre/jdk/Contents/Home

export PATH=${JAVA_HOME}/bin:$PATH

# Set Android_HOME
export ANDROID_HOME=~/Library/Android/sdk/

# Add the Android SDK to the ANDROID_HOME variable
export PATH=$ANDROID_HOME/platform-tools:$PATH
export PATH=$ANDROID_HOME/tools:$PATH

#Set GRADLE_HOME
export GRADLE_HOME=/Applications/Android\ Studio.app/Contents/gradle/gradle-3.2
export PATH=$PATH:$GRADLE_HOME/bin

Save and close the file, then apply these changes by re-sourcing .bash_profile:

source ~/.bash_profile

You'll then be able to run the ionic commands using the built in tools within Android Studio.