It’s already been while since Apple removed the “Java Preference Pane” from OS X, with which it was possible to change between various installed Java versions. I shortly needed to compile some old Java application against the JDK version 1.6 and I was questioning how to change the compiler version.

Here’s how:

JDK 1.6:

export JAVA_HOME=`/usr/libexec/java_home -v 1.6`

JDK 1.7:

export JAVA_HOME=`/usr/libexec/java_home -v 1.7`

Then you can query the currently active version by issuing java -version or javac -version:

java -version
java version "1.6.0_65"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_65-b14-466.1-11M4716)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 20.65-b04-466.1, mixed mode)
javac -version
javac 1.6.0_65

If you want those changed to be persistent, don’t forget to add the export statement to your .bashrc, .profile, .zshrc files…