From: Ken Bloom <kbloom@...>
Date: 2007-06-13T07:10:20+09:00
Subject: Re: using ` and the bash source command

On Mon, 11 Jun 2007 12:56:19 +0900, Kevin Jackson wrote:

> Hi,
> 
>> If you were to run your Java program itself from ruby, I would think
>> that you could set the JAVA_HOME environment variable directly with
>>    ENV[JAVA_HOME] = whatever you want, before executing Java as a
>> child process of the Ruby program.
> 
> I cannot run the Java code from the ruby program as I could be running
> one of several apps.
> 
> I actually got the behaviour I wanted by writing to .bashrc instead of
> bash_profile, so now my workflow is:
> - run jdk_switcher -> open terminal -> run cli java app instead of:
> - vi .bashrc -> modify JAVA_HOME -> open new terminal -> run cli java
> app.
> 
> It's a hell of a lot quicker than manually editing each time and I'm
> fairly happy with the results and there's no need for the source command
> at all as the .bashrc is read every time I open a new terminal
> 
> Anyway, thanks for the help/suggestions

I don't particulary like that, (it seems too hackish) but that's just me.
If there aren't too many different configuration options consider 
creating a shell function that does all of the reconfiguration itself[1], 
if there are too many options and this really demands a gui then have 
your gui write to a separate configuration file, create a shell function 
or alias that reloads that file (alias rejdk="source ~/.jdk_config_file") 
and run that manually in your shell each time you update the config file.

--Ken

[1] Option 1 would live in your .bashrc, and might look something like 
this:

setjdk(){
   case $1 in
     gcj) export JAVA_HOME=... ;;
     1.6) export JAVA_HOME=... ;;
     1.5) export JAVA_HOME=... ;;
     1.4) export JAVA_HOME=... ;;
     kaffe) export JAVA_HOME=... ;;
   esac
}



-- 
Ken Bloom. PhD candidate. Linguistic Cognition Laboratory.
Department of Computer Science. Illinois Institute of Technology.
http://www.iit.edu/~kbloom1/