JDeveloper installation on Mac OS X Mountain Lion

Let's get the "why?" out of the way first - Personally I like to know what IDE's are alive and well for any for any Java development I might be doing especially if it's something new or something I have not done for a while.

Currently NetBeans is my first choice.  Certainly Eclipse is a great standby for any Java development (and a whole lot of non-Java stuff for that matter).  I have tried to get into the in some circles extremely popular Intellij IDEA IDE but so far I am not a fan.

JDeveloper, from Oracle, has an interesting history (I think back to my JBuilder days any time it's mentioned).  It still exists and I assume is well respected or at least used by those in Oracle shops because it does seem to integrate nicely with (or is at least aware of) all things Oracle.

Recently I wanted to check out some functionality specific to JDeveloper and decided I needed to install it on a relatively new MacBook Pro running OS X 10.8.2 (aka Mountain Lion).  After trying to install JDeveloper using the current default Java (1.7.0_11) and given what I was able to learn via Google, I decided I wanted to try the installation using Java 6.

Java 6 is installed on this computer but it's not the default and at least using the control panel I am not able to make it be the default.  For some of you this may mean "stop reading now because this guy can't  switch to Java 6 using the GUI" and if that's the case please let me know what I am missing.  (GUIs are nice but not generally my first choice to understand what's happening or NOT happening as was the case here.)

After downloading the "Generic" flavor of JDeveloper version 11.1.1.6.0 from Oracle's website (which is huge by the way), I tried to install it from the command line like this:

java -jar jdevstudio11123install.jar

There are lots of posts about Oracle's JDeveloper installation instructions for OS X which amount to setting up a symbolic link for the Java runtime jar file so that the Apple-released Java looks more like the Sun/Oracle version.  While this is nice to know if you have not had the pleasure, my computer already had the suggested symbolic link in place.  (There are actually some other interesting tidbits in their instructions but none of them seem to have any relevance to the problem I was having trying to install the IDE.)

The error I was getting was the not-very-helpful "A fatal error has occurred.  This application will terminate." message from the installation program.

So how did I make it work?  From the command line I did the following:

First I set JAVA_HOME via this command:

export JAVA_HOME=/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.6.0/Home

 Next I forced this version of Java to be the default (first found in the path) for the installation like this:

export PATH=$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH

And then I confirmed which version would run by issuing this command:

java -version

 which resulted in this output:


java version "1.6.0_37"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_37-b06-434-11M3909)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 20.12-b01-434, mixed mode)

 And finally I proceeded with the installation by running this command:

java -jar jdevstudio11123install.jar

 I took all the defaults and my installation was a success.

HTH,
Carl



Comments

Unknown said…
Enok7 - Glad it helped and thank you for the comment. - Carl
2:09 PM
Unknown said…
Thank you very much. That worked for me :)
4:26 AM
Unknown said…
You're very welcome Reinhold. I am happy to know it helped. - Carl
8:09 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

ClassCastException: JAXB

Image
A particular Java application I co-developed leverages both SOAP/WSDL and REST web services.  We use maven to manage the build process of this application which has been in production for a few years now.  It's been around long enough to have moved from Java 5 to Java 6 and now Java 7 (with limited testing using Java 8).  We have also had the experience of initially including JAXB jar files with our application and dealing with the "endorsed" directory because JAXB versions were a bit of a moving target for a while. Now that JAXB is neatly included with Java as it should be so we no longer include it.  I thought all of this was behind us (and unfortunately somewhat forgotten) until recently when we added Jersey 1.17 to the application to call some newer REST services. When trying to connect to the server, my stack trace included this: Caused by: java.lang.ClassCastException: com.sun.xml.bind.v2.runtime.JAXBContextImpl cannot be cast to com.sun.xml.internal.bind.api
Read more

Parallel to Lincoln's angry letters never sent concept...

With all that I read, hear, and see these days about folks (not excluding yours truly) expressing themselves, I sometimes wonder about President Lincoln's idea of writing but not sending letters .  For better or worse, there is certainly a sharp contrast between that and typical use of today's communication. I was not necessarily thinking of opinions, emotions, and perspectives although I do see the wisdom in the Lincoln's method of dealing with such issues. My issue, at least this time, was being stuck with a particular problem using a technology which is not part of my regularly used skillset.  The technology itself is irrelevant to my point so I won't name it here. I had struggled with a solution after a bit of reading the documentation, searching for and modifying some similar examples, and experimentation.  The time I had put in was actually very little because I was simultaneously working on other parts of the solution.  That's another way of saying I wa
Read more