Maven ignoring JAVA_HOME on OSX?

Question

For some reason Maven is ignoring JAVA_HOME on OSX.

I recently upgraded from java 8 build 11 to java 8 build 25 and removed 11 because of a bug fix in 25.

Answer 1

I fixed this issue by adding

export JAVA_HOME="$(/usr/libexec/java_home)"

to

~/.mavenrc

Apple recommends using /usr/libexec/java_home instead of using the whole path to Java

Answer 2

A coworker told me what the problem was. He didn't want the rep points so I'm just posting the answer for anybody who may find this via google.

The solution is to put

export JAVA_HOME=/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0_25.jdk/Contents/Home

in

~/.mavenrc

Apparently for whatever reason maven gets its own profile file. Creating the above file with the above value fixed the problem immediately:

:~ > mvn -version
Apache Maven 3.2.3 (33f8c3e1027c3ffffde99d3cdebad2656a31e8fdf4; 2014-08-11T16:58:10-04:00)
Maven home: /usr/local/Cellar/maven/3.2.3/libexec
Java version: 1.8.0_25, vendor: Oracle Corporation
Java home: /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0_25.jdk/Contents/Home/jre
Default locale: en_US, platform encoding: UTF-8
OS name: "mac os x", version: "10.9.5", arch: "x86_64", family: "mac"