Java_HOME not found when changed shell from Bash to Zsh on OSX?

Question

This is weird, I have set JAVA_HOME for my mac which can be found when I am using bash shell, but if I change shell, I get a message saying JAVA_HOME not set. What could be going on here?

Answer 1

export JAVA_HOME=$(/usr/libexec/java_home -v 1.8)

export PATH=$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH

Add above 2 lines in ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc and reload the file using source command.

Answer 2

I stumbled upon your question when trying to solve the same issue while migrating from bash to oh-my-zsh. The reason it's not there is that there is no code setting it for zsh but there was for bash. Generally theres something exporting JAVA_HOME whenever a new bash window is opened so it's always set for you. There is a good thread where this might be happening on the Unix & Linux StackExchange site.

To do the same thing in zsh, you can edit the .zshrc which is run every time zsh starts. I found a sample .zshrc which got me most of the way. The key line being:

export JAVA_HOME=`/usr/libexec/java_home`

Here is the file which I appended to the end of my existing ~/.zshrc file:

#zshrc, interactive shell settings
export ZSH=$HOME/.zsh

# emacs integration
[[ $EMACS = t ]] && unsetopt zle

# env
if [[ -e /usr/libexec/java_home ]]; then
  export JAVA_HOME=`/usr/libexec/java_home`
fi

if [[ -e /usr/local/lib/node_modules ]]; then
  export NODE_PATH=/usr/local/lib/node_modules
fi

# path
export PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/X11/bin
export PATH=/opt/usr/sbin:/opt/sbin:/opt/usr/bin:/opt/bin:$PATH
export PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:$PATH
export PATH=$HOME/.cabal/bin:$PATH
export PATH=$HOME/.gem/ruby/1.8/bin:$PATH
export PATH=$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH
export PATH=$HOME/.bin:$PATH

setopt null_glob
# source all files in zsh root
for include in $ZSH/*.zsh; do
  source $include
done

# source all non-controlled files
for include in $ZSH/private/*.zsh; do
  source $include
done
unsetopt null_glob

Then source ~/.zshrc to run in the current shell (or just start a new one) and you should be able to see that it is set with export | grep JAVA_HOME.

I also ended up running mkdir ~/.zsh to create the directory this is looking for and removing the .cabal and .gem lines as they were not needed for me.