Setting JAVA_HOME on Mac OS X

Some time ago I had set JAVA_HOME in my .profile on Mac OS X to the following:

JAVA_HOME=/Library/Java/Home; export JAVA_HOME

To some extent this works, but it doesn’t apparently pick up your preferred JDK version that you can set via the Java Preferences app in /Applications/Utilities (you set your preferred version by dragging your choice to the top of the list).

To set JAVA_HOME to be set to your preferred version, use this instead:

JAVA_HOME=`/usr/libexec/java_home`; export JAVA_HOME

This post here talks about the first approach, but there’s a comment in response to the post that points out the second point.

Android SDK INSTALL_FAILED_MISSING_SHARED_LIBRARY error

If you’re installing an apk into the Android Emulator and seeing this error (INSTALL_FAILED_MISSING_SHARED_LIBRARY), it may mean that the app relies on the Google APIs (e.g. for Google Maps and the other Google Android apps) and your AVD that you’re running was created without the Google APIs.

Create a new AVD from the AVD Manager using the one of the Google API targets at the API level that you need and you should be good to go.