Finding the Java Runtime Environment libjvm library

PL/Java installation requires knowing the filesystem paths to some items produced by the build, and also to the libjvm (or just jvm on some platforms, like Windows) shared object for the Java Runtime Environment that is to be used.

To find that object can be a bit of an exercise, because of the variety of locations and naming schemes for the Java runtime on different platforms. It may be simplest to do a filesystem search for the name libjvm.* under the Java home directory (which is reported by mvn -v assuming the JRE that you used for running Maven is the one you intend to use at run time).

The filename extension may be .so on many systems, .bundle on Mac OS X (see the Mac OS X build notes for more about OS X), or .dll on Windows. As Windows also leaves off the lib in front, on that platform you would look for jvm.dll.

If a tool such as Linux strace is available to see what files are opened by a process, this works:

strace -e open java 2>&1 | grep libjvm

Version of the Java library selected

The library pointed to be pljava.libjvm_location must be a Java 9 or later JVM for the PL/Java 1.6 series. The actual version of the library will determine what Java language features are available for PL/Java functions to use.

The Java version also influences whether PL/Java can operate with security policy enforcement or with no policy enforcement. For stock Java 24 or later, it is only possible to operate with no enforcement, and the implications detailed for PL/Java with no policy enforcement should be carefully reviewed.

Using a less-specific path

The methods above may find the libjvm object on a very specific path (for example, including the JRE vendor, major, minor, version, and patch numbers). If that exact path is used to SET pljava.libjvm_location in PostgreSQL, PL/Java will stop working as soon as the next Java patch is applied.

Typical OS distributions will also provide some less specific, alias paths to the Java runtime environment. On Linux, for example, there may be a /usr/lib/jvm directory with entries using only the major and minor Java version that are symbolic links to the fully specified JRE. By using such an alias instead of the absolutely specific Java path, you can avoid headaches when Java is updated.

By the same token, the directory of aliases may contain a completely generic one like jre, linked to whichever Java version is considered current. Using an alias that is too generic could possibly invite headaches if the default Java version is ever changed to one your PL/Java modules were not written for (or PL/Java itself was not built for).