Mac OSX environment variable hell

So I recently issued a Mac OSX update.  Afterwards, I wasn’t able to run the Red5Plugin.  It kept telling me that there was no JAVA_HOME defined.  Something was being spit out like:

“/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.6.0/bin/java” (-1)

true enough that directory didn’t exist.  However, running Red5 from the terminal gave the intended result.   So I was confused as to why eclipse wasn’t using the same JAVA_HOME that I had set in my ~/.bashrc file.  It turns out that eclipse as well as other Java applications use ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist.  So if you have the same problem, just open that file, change the JAVA_HOME to point to the correct location.  For me, it’s /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.6.0/Home.  After making the change, log out and back in and eclipse and the Red5Plugin should work fine again.

For more information, check out this post: http://lindaocta.com/?p=38

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