Java Reference
In-Depth Information
In any case, once you've located the install directory for Java, you'll see a
bin
directory in there. In that
bin
directory you'll see
java
,
javac
,
jar
, and a whole
bunch of other things. You'll need to add the full path for that
bin
directory
to your shell's
PATH
.
The
PATH
is a list of directories, separated by a colon (semicolon on Windows).
To change your
PATH
for the bash shell that we're using, follow these steps:
5
1.
In the shell, navigate to your home directory by typing
cd
, by itself. Confirm
the full path of your home directory by typing
pwd
.
2.
Using your text editor, create or edit the bash startup file in your home
directory. Normally this will be a file named
.profile
or
.bash_profile
in your
home directory (note the leading dot). On Windows using BusyBox, you
have to use
.profile
. Otherwise you should use
.bash_profile
.
ls
won't normally
show files with a leading dot, but
ls-a
will show it if the file already exists.
You may need to create it from scratch, and that's okay.
3.
Add a line to the file to modify the
PATH
setting, adding Java's
bin
directory,
separated by a colon (:)—or a semicolon (;) on Windows.
For example, on Linux or Mac, if my JDK was installed in
/opt/local/java
, I'd add
a line to
.bash_profile
that said
export PATH="$PATH:/opt/local/java/bin:"
On Windows, you need to change the backslashes to slashes and use semi-
colons instead of colons, so if Java's installed in
C:\ProgramFiles\Java\jdk1.7.0_67\bin
(which is Windows style) you add a line to
.profile
that says this, in POSIX style:
export PATH="$PATH;C:/Program Files/Java/jdk1.7.0_67/bin;"
Save and close the file, then close and reopen your command-line windows
to pick up the new settings.
Seriously—you have to close all your open command-line windows and reopen
them for this to take effect.
To check your path and see if your new setting worked, type this:
$
echo $PATH
You should see your new entry that includes Java's
bin
.
5.
If you run into trouble with this method, especially with Windows, take a look at