Difference between JAVA_OPTS and JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS?

Question

When should each of these environment variables be used?

Possible duplicate of Difference between _JAVA_OPTIONS JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS and JAVA_OPTS — Vadzim
– Vadzim, Commented Oct 27, 2015 at 20:27

Mysticial · Accepted Answer · 2012-09-22 10:14:57Z

22

JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS is read by some JDK tools, but has limited applicability.

JAVA_OPTS is a convention used by Apache Tomcat and some other apps, but is not read directly by any JDK tools published by Sun/Oracle, AFAIK.

From: https://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?messageID=6438415

JAVA_OPTS is not an environment variable that the java executable will recognize on it's own. Instead, various scripts which wrap the start up of java will often use an environment variable named JAVA_OPTS to configure the java executable (for example, the tomcat startup script does this).

edited Sep 22, 2012 at 10:14

Mysticial

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answered Sep 8, 2012 at 22:31

Stu Btwotwo

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David Ferenczy Rogožan · Accepted Answer · 2019-08-08 09:18:58Z

19

see "what is" doc and "tool options" doc

Basically, the JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS is intended for use by development tools, monitoring tools and the like whereas JAVA_OPTS is used for running 'general' Java programs, I think people tend to mix and match somewhat (from what Google has shown me example wise).

edited Aug 8, 2019 at 9:18

David Ferenczy Rogožan

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answered Oct 14, 2010 at 13:06

Martijn Verburg

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3 Comments

conny Over a year ago

One real-world example: JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS is used by TeamCity CI to pass settings to step runners such as "Simple Build Tool" (Scala SBT), and users need use JAVA_OPTS in order to not clobber the implicit system parameters passed on by the TeamCity server such as - http_proxy could be one of these.

conny Over a year ago

Another difference is that when JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS is defined, a message is always echoed to stdout, like Picked up JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS: -XX:+UseG1GC -Xmx4G.

charlie arehart Over a year ago

If it's of value for readers using later JVMs, those links above can be found also for java 17 or java 11.

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