Updating SQL Developer to use newer Java version


I was being teased by SQL Developer.

Everytime I started it came nagging about that it was being forced to live in an old Java version called jdk1.7.0_45 and that is was not feeling happy about it.
So, I should remedy this, I thought to myself.

First visit was, inspired by some search-work on the WWW, a file called product.conf. Which offered two possiblities:

java

SetJavaHome to some logical location
or
SetJavaHome to nothing, and then SQL Developer would kindly ask me to point it to somwhere to live.

Well… no. My SQL Developer refused it all and just started with this jdk 1.7.

Same hack done in another file on another location, a file called sqldeveloper.conf.
Same result.

Freshly downloaded SQL Developer, put in place… No help!

Erm…

Rename
drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel  102 Jan  6  2014 jdk1.7.0_45.jdk
in /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines
to
drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel  102 Jan  6  2014 xxx-jdk1.7.0_45.jdk

Nope! Still the same nagging…

What now?

In the end, I wound up with one of Jeff Smits’s helpers.
This guy aksed me to “start SQL Developer from the commandline”. Right, but how?

So I finally found:
/Applications/SQLDeveloper.app/Contents/MacOS/sqldeveloper.sh

And that did start SQL Developer from the command-line…

But… wait… an .sh-file!! Interesting!!

And, behold… in this .sh-file lies the answer:sqldev_startup1

So the file reads:
export JAVA_HOME=`/usr/libexec/java_home -v 1.7`
Which I hacked to:
export JAVA_HOME=`/usr/libexec/java_home -v 1.8`

And, presto, error-message gone and SQL Developer now happily lives in Java 8.

Hope this helps somebody out!!


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