Chris Muir recently tweeted about the release of a “JDeveloper on Mac” viewlet that guides a user through installing JDeveloper on OS X. Here’s the link:
Viewlet: Installling JDeveloper on OS X
The viewlet is a good overview of how JDeveloper expects certain JAR files from the Apple JDK and how to create symbolic links to allow JDeveloper to load expected JAR files. (I expect this issue to vanish as the Apple JDK is phased out in favor of the Oracle JDK once JDeveloper makes the move to Java 7.)
I am going to note a nitpicky criticism and a helpful tip:
Nitpicky criticism: The tutorial describes the process for enabling the root user on OS X, which is both not necessary and also discouraged by Apple for security reasons. You can accomplish the same results (creating symbolic links in files owned by the System user) by invoking the sudo command as an Administrative user. To do this, you’ll open a terminal window as an administrative user (likely your normal login) and issue the symbolic link command using sudo, something like
sudo ln -s [real file name] [link to create]
This will create the link (after you are prompted to enter your administrative password) without enabling the root user.
Helpful Tip: I’ve always found it useful to create an alias to the JDeveloper executable and placing that alias in the OS X “Applications” folder. With an alias in the Applications folder you can launch JDeveloper from LaunchPad or your favorite keyboard assistant (I’m a devoted Alfred user) without having to modify system properties. I tend to need a couple different versions of JDeveloper to support client projects, so I’ve created symbolic links from the various JDeveloper versions to the Applications folder, which allows me to access the version of JDeveloper that I need for various projects through a few simple keystrokes:
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