Manage Your Java Versions with SDKMAN!

Thursday, 18 July 2024

You can easily install and switch between Java versions using SDKMAN! It allows for setting a default version and switching to a specific version for a particular project.

How to get started

Ok, so how to get started? Well that's easy. Just use the following command in your terminal to install SDKMAN!

$ curl -s "https://get.sdkman.io" | bash

Afterwards open a new terminal or run the next command in the same shell:

$ source "~/.sdkman/bin/sdkman-init.sh"

SDKMAN! supports installing versions of Java, Scala, Kotlin, Groovy, Gradle, Maven and Spring Boot. To install the latest stable Java version use:

$ sdk install java

You can also list all available candidate versions using:

$ sdk list java

================================================================================
Available Java Versions for macOS ARM 64bit
================================================================================
 Vendor        | Use | Version      | Dist    | Status     | Identifier
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Corretto      |     | 22.0.2       | amzn    |            | 22.0.2-amzn
               |     | 22.0.1       | amzn    |            | 22.0.1-amzn
               |     | 21.0.4       | amzn    |            | 21.0.4-amzn
               |     | 21.0.3       | amzn    |            | 21.0.3-amzn
               |     | 17.0.12      | amzn    |            | 17.0.12-amzn
...

And install a specific version from the list with for example:

$ sdk install java 22.0.2-amzn

To use a specific version in the current shell type:

$ sdk use java 21.0.3-tem

Make it the default version with the following command:

$ sdk default java 21.0.3-tem

Env Command

You can create a config file .sdkmanrc that you can store in your repository:

$ sdk env init

Then every time you work in that repository you can change to the specific version in the config file using:

$ sdk env

And if you are lazy like me, you can even let the terminal do this automatically for you.

To make this happen set the sdkman_auto_env variable to true in ~/.sdkman/etc/config

The terminal also resets to your default version upon leaving the directory.

Upgrade versions

To see what is currently out of date you can use the following command:

$ sdk upgrade

  or

$ sdk upgrade java

To install the latest version of SKDMAN! use:

$ sdk selfupdate

Finally, you can refresh the list of candidate versions with:

sdk update