Alternatives

Internal

• Linux
• Java on Linux

Overview

alternatives

Obtain the Alternatives for an Executables

alternatives --display java
alternatives --display java | grep priority

The output contains the "alternatives" - which include the full path of the executable and a priority.

Set an Alternative Interactively

alternatives --config java

Set an Alternative Non-Interactively

One way of setting an alternative java installation is with --set.

alternatives --set java /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.8.0-amazon-corretto/jre/bin/java

The exact path can be obtained with --display. The command is sensitive to the exact absolute path of the "alternative" executable.

On occasions, alternatives --set fails:

alternatives --set java  /usr/lib/jvm/amazon-corretto-8.292.10.1-linux-x64/bin/java
/usr/lib/jvm/amazon-corretto-8.292.10.1-linux-x64/bin/java has not been configured as an alternative for java

In that situation, an alternative installation method is:

cd /usr/lib/jvm/
tar tfvz amazon-corretto-8-x64-linux-jdk.tar.gz
alternatives --install /usr/bin/java java /usr/lib/jvm/amazon-corretto-8.292.10.1-linux-x64/bin/java 10