What is JAVA_HOME? How does the JVM find the javac path stored in JAVA_HOME?

java core
giri picture giri · Jan 8, 2010 · Viewed 101.7k times · Source

I would like to know what is JAVA_HOME. Where do I set the path of javac.exe and java.exe. It is in environment variables. When I compile a Java program from command prompt, how does the JVM find javac.exe?

Answer

duffymo picture duffymo · Jan 8, 2010

JVM does not find java.exe. It doesn't even call it. java.exe is called by the operating system (Windows in this case).

JAVA_HOME is just a convention, usually used by Tomcat, other Java EE app servers and build tools such as Gradle to find where Java lives.

The important thing from your point of view is that the Java /bin directory be on your PATH so Windows can find the .exe tools that ship with the JDK: javac.exe, java.exe, jar.exe, etc.

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