Permission Error When Exporting to $JAVA_HOME on MacOS Big Sur

Question

Whenever I try to set my Java Home export JAVA_HOME=$(/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/amazon-corretto-8.jdk/Contents/Home) in my .zshenv or .zshrc files, I get an /Users/{USER NAME HERE}/.zshenv:1: permission denied: /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/amazon-corretto-8.jdk/Contents/Home error when starting up my terminal. In fact, I can't seem to be able to export anything (for example, export TEST=$(/Users/{USER NAME HERE}) gives me a zsh: permission denied: /Users/{USER NAME HERE} error. I already gave full disk access in system preferences, but that doesn't seem to be working either. I am the only user on my computer.

Lorenza

Answer 1

The $(foo) bit means, loosely, "run foo as a program, then insert its output here and go on as if I had typed it", which is not what you want here. Just do

export JAVA_HOME=/Library/Java/...

The $() bit is useful when you use the Mac's Java selection mechanism, and run e.g.

export JAVA_HOME=$(/usr/libexec/java_home -v16)

In that case, you're running a program, and setting JAVA_HOME to the output of that program.

Fastidious

even without $() I am still getting the permission denied error... – Marion

@MathewRuberg If you get a permission error on a simple export operation, you are doing something wrong, but it is hard to tell what. I suggest asking a new question, showing exactly what you did and what error message you got. However, there’s a risk it will be closed as off topic for Stack Overflow and more fit for one of the other sites. – Religieux

Answer 2

Ran into the same issue today, and figured out out to fix it. Remember to close/open your shell (or resource it) after making the change in your profile script.

In Z shell, the export statement is a bit different than bash, as you can set the environment variable without the $().

Instead of: export JAVA_HOME=$(/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/amazon-corretto-8.jdk/Contents/Home)

Use the simpler zsh form with quote marks for the path: export JAVA_HOME="/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/amazon-corretto-8.jdk/Contents/Home"

Schonthal

Your answer could be improved with additional supporting information. Please edit to add further details, such as citations or documentation, so that others can confirm that your answer is correct. You can find more information on how to write good answers in the help center. – Gyrfalcon

Notice that this is not a zsh-vs-bash difference, it’s a doing-completely-different-things difference. $() does the same thing in both shells. – Religieux

Answer 3

Posting my fix in case it helps some else (or me the next time I run into this issue). This was done on a 2021 M1 Macbook Pro (Ventura 13.3.1 a) - if you're reading this in 2-3 years I hope this saves you some time.

I was running into this permission issue trying to get Expo's native module tutorial working (https://docs.expo.dev/modules/native-module-tutorial/) - iOS had its own issues with ruby/gem version chaos and with Android I had trouble with the above and when setting $JAVA_HOME I was running into the issue above - I wanted to configure the global version of JAVA so that Expo could build properly.

I managed to get past the error with JENV (https://www.jenv.be/) and using Android Studio to get a few versions of the JDK to play with (Settings -> Build, Execution, Deployment -> Build Tools -> Gradle) - you can easily download new Gradle JDKs here.

Openjdk Version 20 which is what I had installed previously (via brew) seemed to have compiler issues with expo's code so I installed Corretto v17 (via Android Studio). In Android Studio I could see the Home directory of this JDK so I was able to add it to the available versions to JENV (jenv add ~~~jdk home directory here~~~) and then set that as the global version jenv global 17 - from there the $JAVA_HOME issues seemed to be resolved as the compiler was able to find and use the correct version.

Aglaia

Answer 4

In my case, I solved this problem by changing:

export JAVA_HOME=$(/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/zulu-11.jdk/Contents/Home) export JAVA_HOME=$(/usr/libexec/java_home)

to:

export JAVA_HOME=/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/zulu-11.jdk/Contents/Home export JAVA_HOME=/usr/libexec/java_home

• deleting the $() that encloses the values of the variables

PD: You can get this file by writing in the console(iTerm at Mackbook Pro m3 in my case):

nano ~/.zshrc

After deleting the $() safe the file and run in the terminal:

source ~/.zshrc

Vitellus