Upgrade to OpenJDK Temurin using Homebrew

How to upgrade OpenJDK in MacOS using brew?

In my previous post about Setting up Maven Cucumber, I used AdoptOpenJDK to install Java 11. This time, I will upgrade my environment to Java 17. But I still want to manage my Java versions using Homebrew.

Upgrade to OpenJDK Temurin 17 LTS by Eclipse. This time I will get it from a new source since the AdoptOpenJDK repository is now deprecated. The command to install is very simple.

brew install --cask temurin

To use a different version of Java, you need to activate a third-party repository (TAP).

brew tap homebrew/cask-versions
brew install --cask temurin8

Using multiple Java versions

After I upgrade to OpenJDK Temurin 17 LTS, I still want to keep the previous versions of my Java. And to easily switch in between versions, I can create an alias in my .bash_profile.

export JAVA_17_HOME=$(/usr/libexec/java_home -v 17)
export JAVA_11_HOME=$(/usr/libexec/java_home -v 11.0.11)
export JAVA_8_HOME=$(/usr/libexec/java_home -v 1.8.0_242)

alias java17="export JAVA_HOME=$JAVA_17_HOME"
alias java11="export JAVA_HOME=$JAVA_11_HOME"
alias java8="export JAVA_HOME=$JAVA_8_HOME"

#set default to Java 17
java17

To switch to Java 11 in your terminal.

java11

And that’s it for this quick tutorial. Happy coding!