Rich Dougherty ⬦ rd.nz

Running IntelliJ IDEA on Mac OS with Java 8

IntelliJ IDEA doesn’t support Java 8 right now, but I want to use it anyway. :)

Here’s my solution:

$ JAVA_HOME=/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0_05.jdk/Contents/Home
$ sudo mkdir -p $JAVA_HOME/bundle/Libraries
$ sudo ln -s $JAVA_HOME/jre/lib/server/libjvm.dylib $JAVA_HOME/bundle/Libraries/libserver.dylib
$ cd /Applications/IntelliJ\ IDEA\ 13\ CE.app
$ vi Contents/Info.plist

And change the JVMVersion entry:

      <key>JVMVersion</key>
      <string>1.8*</string>

Then launch IDEA.

$ IDEA_LAUNCHER_DEBUG="" IDEA_JDK=$JAVA_HOME Contents/MacOS/idea

Source material:

  1. Info about running from the command line and updating Info.plist
  2. Info about symlinking