At the recent OpenMRS Worldwide Summit #OMRS15, I was helping out with the Saptarshi’s introductory tutorial and realized that the OpenMRS Standalone requires Java 7, meaning that it fails to run on Java 8. Yikes! But my Mac runs Java 8. How do I get Java 7 on my laptop without making a mess of things?
jenv to the rescue! jenv provides an easy way to manage multiple Java versions. Not only can you easily switch between Java versions, but you can configure different folders to run specific versions of Java. So, for example, you can run Java 7 for the OpenMRS Standalone and run Java 8 everywhere else.
Step zero. Install Homebrew. I already had this installed. I used to use Macports to install utilities on my Mac, but it was fairly invasive. Homebrew installs most everything under your user account, so it doesn’t mess with Mac’s view of the world and rarely, if ever, requires the use of sudo.
Step one. Install jenv.
brew install jenv
Step two. Install Java 7.
Grab the latest version of Java 7 SDK from Oracle’s Java 7 archive. For me, this meant navigating to the Java SE Development Kit 7u80 downloads, accepting the license agreement, and then downloading and installing from the dmg package for Mac OS X x64.
Step three. Tell jenv about Java 7.
jenv add /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.7.0_80.jdk/Contents/Home/
If your version number differs, then your command may differ slightly. You can always navigate into /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/ to find your installed version folders.
Done!
Now you can navigate into your OpenMRS Standalone folder, set the preferred Java version with a command like:
jenv local oracle64-1.7.0.80
and then execute the standalone with:
jenv exec java -jar openmrs-standalone.jar