Hi Karen,
each prozess has an "environment", wich is a private memory range.
When you set an environment variable,then you are writing to this memory.
If you "export" an environment variable,then this means,that
each prozess which you will start afterwards, will inherit a copy of
this variable. Variables set in parallel or previous processes
are not affected. So you cannot change the environment of processes,
which are already running.
All environment vars are volatile,so if you need permanent settings
then you will need to write them to a shell script.
You can have later shell scripts overwriting this inherited copy of
the parent environment without affecting previously started prozesses
or parallel prozesses.
However,I dont know if it is possible to run 2 different Java VM's at the
same time, if this is what you want. (I would doubt this)
Im a Newbie and never posted to any mailing list before,so this is
my first try. If there are mistakes,then please correct me.
greetings,
Peter
"Karen M. Heiby" wrote:
>
> My main concern is java libraries. I downloaded jdk117_v1a and
> jdk117_v3 and have those installed, besides a directory that is already
> in my /usr/local/bin directory called "java", and whatever java stuff
> Netscape puts on here.
>
> WHen I export a JAVA_HOME, am I appending to a file somewhere for a new
> place to include when looking for java files? Or am I overwriting the
> path (therefore making my other java homes not work anymore?) If
> there's a file I'm writing to, what is it?
>
> I ask because I have a few programs that call for different java
> versions (Netscape seems to come with its own package) and I don't want
> one program to screw the other over if possible. For example, I don't
> want to overwrite paths that Netscape needs when I install jdk117 for
> ICQJava and in doing so, export a JAVA_HOME path to jdk117. But is this
> what I am in fact doing?
>
