Different java versions on mac machine?

Question

There is something going wrong with my java configuration and it is really bugging me. I am using IntelliJ IDEA and after downloading and installing java 8 I tried to configure my project to use that SDK but I could only locate version 1.6 under /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/ . I am new to OS X and I am really confused with the paths. Looking on my Java control panel I can see I got installed Java 8 but after running java -version on the terminal I get 1.6.0_65 . And the which java gives back /usr/bin/java . Please help I am completely lost

Answer 1

Here is an example with several Java versions installed side-by-side ...

ls /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/
jdk1.7.0_25.jdk jdk1.7.0_72.jdk jdk1.8.0_05.jdk jdk1.8.0_25.jdk

User can edit ~/.profile to point explicitly at one

export JAVA_HOME=/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.7.0_72.jdk/Contents/Home
export PATH=$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH

And here is result ...

java -version
java version "1.7.0_72"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0_72-b14)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 24.72-b04, mixed mode)

Answer 2

Well something was wrong with the installation. I completely removed the other versions (not 1.6) and reinstalled 1.8 using the default path (as there is no option to change it during installation. Now IntelliJ can see JDK 1.8 Thanks for the help anyway