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OS X Lion ships without Java now. Installing it is not very difficult - however, our product relies on Java so we need to test the scenario of not having Java installed.

Once I've installed Java, is there any way to uninstall it from Lion?

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migrated from stackoverflow.com Jul 27 '11 at 17:06

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4 Answers

up vote 3 down vote

I followed the instructions followed in this blog and they worked for me.

The steps are as follows:

  1. Check for Java Installation: sudo /usr/libexec/java_home -xml (an output with two JVM dictionaries confirms that Java is installed)
  2. Run uninstaller: sudo /usr/libexec/java_home –uninstall
  3. Remove JVM installation location: sudo rm -rf /System/Library/Java
  4. Run command from step 1 again. If you receive an output starting with "Unable to find any JVMs matching version", this confirms that Java is no longer installed.
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Unfortunately, this process doesn't appear to work after the 2012-04-05 update. There is no -uninstall argument to the java_home binary. – Sean Apr 5 at 18:24
Works for me on 10.7.4. – Josh Brown May 24 at 12:29
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up vote 2 down vote

I don't know about uninstalling Java, but since Lion now permits virtualization another option is just to run another instance of Lion in a VM and don't install Java on it. This can also be used to test other configurations that you might run into.

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Do you know of a hypervisor (like VMware Fusion or Parallels Desktop) that will run Lion? – William Jackson Jul 27 '11 at 19:20
@William: Looking into it, it appears that it is now allowed by Apple, and both VMWare and Parallels are working on adding it. BUt as of now, neither support doing it. – KeithB Jul 27 '11 at 20:01
Thank you, guys! I didn't know about the virtualization on Lion. Sounds like a good solution, now just have to wait until emulators start supporting it. – Lukich Jul 28 '11 at 18:37
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up vote 2 down vote

You could always just make a clean install of Lion for test purposes, either on an extra partition or in virtualization.

You could also use the Java .pkg file to obtain a list of installed files.

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up vote 0 down vote

A procedure for uninstalling Java in Leopard is outlined in
How do you uninstall and then reinstall java on Mac OS X? :

There is no Java uninstaller that I am aware of.

Use Spotlight to find Java files, including receipts. You will have to be an expert surgeon because quite a lot of what you find may have come from third-party installers. (Do you really want to mess up several different applications?)
Trash the items that you are sure are only related to the Java VM.
Rename or remove: /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework.

Boot to the Leopard install DVD. Choose custom install, select only "Essential System Software". After it finishes and restarts, use Software Update for a few update-restart cycles until it shows "is up-to-date".

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