How to Revert to Java 1.6 on Mac OS X 10.7.5

Question

I have the 1.6 installer. I\'ve used it. It does not change my Java installation, nor say there is an older version, but it does complete the installation.

I\'ve bee

Answer 1

The java, javac, etc. command line tools are sensitive to the value of the JAVA_HOME environment variable and will use 1.6 if this variable points to a 1.6 JDK. The tool /usr/libexec/java_home is your friend here. Running

/usr/libexec/java_home

will print out the appropriate JAVA_HOME value for the most up to date JDK on your system. This will be Java 7, but you can apply constraints using the -v flag, for example

/usr/libexec/java_home -v '1.6*'

will return a JAVA_HOME value for the best available 1.6 JDK on your system. You can use this value to set JAVA_HOME:

export JAVA_HOME=`/usr/libexec/java_home -v '1.6*'`

either as a one-off for a particular Terminal session, or permanently for all future terminal sessions by adding the above line to the .bash_profile file in your home directory.

---

$ export JAVA_HOME=`/usr/libexec/java_home -v '1.6*'`
$ java -version
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)
$ export JAVA_HOME=`/usr/libexec/java_home -v '1.7*'`

$ java -version
java version "1.7.0_09"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0_09-b05)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 23.5-b02, mixed mode)