Towards the “true” definition of JAVA_HOME

Question

As a Java developer who switches between *NIX systems (OS X, Ubuntu, ...), although I can always \"get\" my JDK up and running, it seems that there is no clear definition of

Answer 1

Sun's convention refers to java home as the jre root dir. This should be the more authoritative definition.

For dev tools like maven, they would mostly care about jdk dir. They should have called it "JDK home". Unfortunately many call it "java home" too, hence the confusion.

We can break the confusion by not using "java home"; instead, say "jre home" or "jdk home" for clarity.