Program can't be found in PATH by Java Runtime on Mac OS X

Question

I am using ImageMagick on Mac OS X (10.7). I installed it with the help of MacPorts.

When I now enter the Terminal and write:

identify image.jpg

it is working perfectly fine.

But now while executing it from within Java, the following exception gets thrown:

org.im4java.core.CommandException: java.io.FileNotFoundException: identify

I can see it's on the PATH by running:

which identify

with the response:

/opt/local/bin/identify

Now while running:

echo $PATH

I get the response:

/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11/bin

The same code works perfectly on Windows where ImageMagick is also installed.

So why is im4java not finding identify in the PATH at all?

Answer 1

Like it's described here for OS X 10.8 and here for OS X 10.7 the only complete solution is to set your PATH in /etc/launchd.conf.

Per default the PATH for Applications ist set to /usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin, even if you do not have a /etc/launchd.conf at all.

So you have to do the following in your terminal:

sudo vi /etc/launchd.conf

and add the following line or modify it, if it already exists:

setenv PATH /opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin

Important: Now you need to reboot your Mac!

You can reproduce your PATH in your Java application with the following code:

public class Main {
    public static void main (String[] args) {
        System.out.println("PATH=" + System.getenv().get("PATH"));
    }
}

There is a second solution, if you start your Program from within an IDE like Eclipse you can set the PATH there as well. In Eclipse you can do that via Run | Run Configurations | Environment while selecting your launch configuration on the left side bar under Java Application.

I did reproduce it with the following code and image.jpg located in ${user.dir} aka the current directory where your Java app got launched from.

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;

public class Main {
    public static void main (String[] args) {
        System.out.println("PATH=" + System.getenv().get("PATH"));
        try {
            Process exec = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("identify image.jpg");
            InputStream is = exec.getInputStream();
            InputStreamReader isr = new InputStreamReader(is);
            BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(isr);
            System.out.println(br.readLine());
        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
} 

You should get similar output like this after running the code above:

PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin
image.jpg JPEG 690x518 690x518+0+0 8-bit sRGB 152KB 0.000u 0:00.000

The first output line show your PATH for the Java application you run right now. The second output line comes from identify image.jpg.

Note: I am running Mac OS X 10.8.2 and MacPorts 2.1.3

---

Note: There were a way prior to Mac OS X 10.8 to set global variables on a user by user base employing ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist. But this is no longer working anymore starting with Mountain Lion (aka Mac OS X 10.8). Details can be checked out here:

• https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/57385/where-are-system-environment-variables-set-in-mountain-lion

Answer 2

Try setting the search path to the target directory:

import org.im4java.process.ProcessStarter;
ProcessStarter.setGlobalSearchPath("/opt/local/bin");