Where to add JAVA_HOME and MAVEN path variables in linux

Question

I know there are a lot of articles about this topic but I wonder where to add the JAVA_HOME and MAVEN path variables.

I have 3 files:

~/.bashrc
~/.bash_profile
/etc/profile

Which one should I use in order to add JAVA_HOME and export maven to the PATH?

export JAVA_HOME="/path/to/jdk"

export PATH=$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH

I personally use ~/.bashrc but I don't believe that they are strict rules for this — Nicolas Filotto, Jun 19 '16 at 10:25
With java installed to a system location, and to /etc/alternatives/ , you never have to think about setting JAVA_HOME. — Knud Larsen, Jun 19 '16 at 10:38
If you installed different versions of Java installed JDK6, JDK7, JDK8, JDK9 than you have to think about that... — khmarbaise, Jun 19 '16 at 11:56

score 12 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 19 '16 at 11:43

The only thing to do is to add the bin folder of the appropriate Maven distribution (apache-maven-3.3.9/bin) to your path variable. The JAVA_HOME location can be done either via environment variable. But the problem here is that it might influence other tools etc. So i would suggest to use $HOME/.mavenrc file for such purposes.

A .mavenrc file can look like this:

export JAVA_HOME=/...LocationYouNeed
export MAVEN_OPTS="-Xmx768m ..."

By using this you can limit this only to Maven. So in the end you only need to set the location of Maven via PATH that's it.

Starting with Maven 3.3.1 you can use the .mvn/jvm.config to configure memory settings etc. on a per project base which will be checked in with your project. This means you can remove the MAVEN_OPTS from your .mavenrc file.

Usually you don't necessarily need to add JAVA_HOME/bin to your path. If you need JAVA_HOME only to run Maven you don't need to.

If you need to support multiple Maven versions you can define a location in your path which you can change via a symbolic link.

Where to add JAVA_HOME and MAVEN path variables in linux

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