[Techtalk] Java J2sdk 1 3 1 upgrade from jdk 1 1 8

[Mandi]

On Wed, 13 Feb 2002, Raena Lea-Shannon wrote:

> I am installing Limweire and it requires Java Runtime j2sdk1.3.1. On
> SuSE installation it comes with JDK 1.1.8 for Star Office.

If star office is using the 1.1.8 jdk, then removing it may prevent star
office from working.  You can have multiple jdks around, as long as you
set the appropriate environment variables for the specific jdk you
application needs.

> Do I rm jdk 1.1.8 and then chmod+ j2sdk1.3.1 then
> ./j2sdk1.3.1 and bingo?

Did you download the tar file from sun or are you using some other release
of the jdk?  For sun's jdks, (and blackdown's) all you have to do is run
the jdk program - they're packed as executable binaries.  It will unpack
itself into a directory directly under the one you run it from.

Then you can set the environment variables that your application may need
- usually JAVA_HOME will get them running.

>
> Then once I have j2sdk unpacked I gather I have to set a path in some
> profile somewhere. I did this in RH 7.2 once before in the bash_profile
> but SuSE has no such file.
>


you could create an alias for your user to run limewire, something like

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/local/j2sdk1.3.1; export
PATH=/usr/local/j2sdk1.3.1/jre/bin:$PATH; limewire

(that's not a direct quote, though, but something similar should work.)

You can also write a script to wrap limewire in so it gets its correct
stuff.  It may want a CLASSPATH variable, too.  That's often
.../j2sdk1.3.1/jre/lib or similar.

You can have as many versions of the jdk on the machine as you need to,
provided that each program that requires java points to the version it
needs.  We keep about 6 around at any given time, and have aliases to
switch back and forth.

Good luck!

--mandi