Thank you all for the advice.

I typically develop with a recent version of Oracle's Java.  I'm still 
running Java 7 because that's what deployed on our clusters.
I only change to another JVM to test applications for general release.

Alternatives used to look good but I'll work on modules for the 
different releases.  This is the first I've heard of scl-utils.

Joe

On 03/24/2014 12:11 AM, Dr Andrew C Aitchison wrote:
> On Sat, 22 Mar 2014, Joseph Areeda wrote:
>
>> On 03/22/2014 09:17 AM, Orion Poplawski wrote:
>>> On 03/22/2014 07:44 AM, Joseph Areeda wrote:
>>>> Hi All,
>>>>
>>>> My immediate problem is that the utility "jar" is not in my path and
>>>> update-alternatives --config java does not set up the symbolic 
>>>> link.  I
>>>> currently have /usr/lib/jvm/jre-1.7.0-openjdk.x86_64/bin/java 
>>>> selected.
>>>> This is as installed.
>>> Do you have java-1.7.0-openjdk-devel installed?  That is where jar 
>>> lives.
>>>
>> Hi Orion,
>>
>> My problem is not running jar, but rather switching between different 
>> JDK's. I have OpenJDK 6 and 7 and Oracle's 6 and 7 and use
>>
>> update-alternatives --config java
>>
>> to switch between them for testing.  Unfortunately I can't seem to 
>> convince everybody to use my favorite JDK ;-)
>>
>> The problem is that the alternative setup in the RPMs is not 
>> complete.  jar, javadoc, javah and jstack are the ones I use the most 
>> which are are not there.
>>
>> What I'm wondering is if I have to build the install sets from 
>> scratch or if there's a way to just slave files to existing sets?
>
> Like Nico I'm wary of switching the default java machine-wide.
>
> Instead of alternatives I suggest that you use either
> scl-utils or environment-modules, both of which
> allow you to change the default version of a command
> within some (inherited) context, setting all necessary environment.
>
> I prefer environment-modules (mostly because it updates the existing
> shell rather than starting a new one with the altered state)
> but Red Hat use scl-utils for some of the packages which they ship.
>