

In the Applications > Utilities folder there is an application called Java Preferences. OSX allows you to install multiple versions of the Java development environment, a very useful ability especially for testing new versions easily. Configure the default Java development environment Download the latest versions of Java SE 7 and OpenJDK 7 and open the dmg files to install them. There is a website for the OpenJDK project, although most of the content seems a little dated and unless you are running Linux it provides nothing of interest to help you install OpenJDK on the Mac. Both Oracle Java SE 7 and OpenJDK 7 come as dmg files for the Mac, although the OpenJDK files are not as easy to find. On the Mac there doesn’t seem to be much in it when it comes to ease of installation.

To openjdk or not openjdk, that is the question. This article covers the easiest way I found to install Java SE 7 and OpenJDK 7 together. If you also want to try installing OpenJDK 7, then there is a little more discovery to be done when locating the install files. Whilst its fairly easy to install Java SE 7 on the Mac, its a little more interesting when it comes to setting it as the default Java runtime environment.

The default version of Java Standard Edition development environment is not one of those things.Īlthough Java SE does come pre-installed on most OSX versions, it is the soon to be unsupported Java 6 version (unsupported that is without paying Oracle big support fees of course). There are many things that make the MacBook pro a nice machine for software developers.
