How to Create an Alias to Easily Start JMeter on your Local Machine

Apache JMeter is a Java-based, open source testing tool, which can help you create and run functional and load tests for Websites, APIs (REST and SOAP) and other web services.

Let me show you my personal configuration and how I start and configure JMeter for a faster and better use on my local machine.

Steps to Run JMeter Locally

I work on a Mac laptop running macOS Catalina v.10.15.5, so the configuration is specific for my environment.

1. Download the JMeter binaries from Apache JMeter Download page.
2. Unarchive the apache-jmeter-5.4.1.tgz on my local computer by clicking the file I’ve just downloaded.
3. I’m using iTerm as my macOS Terminal and Oh My Zsh as my Zsh configuration. The configuration for Oh My Zsh is kept in the .zshrc file.
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4. Open the configuration file from my terminal with the following command using Vim as editom:
   • sudo vi ~/.zshrc
   • Press the key i to edit the content of the file
5. Create an alias to the path where you downloaded Apache JMeter, pointing to the /bin/jmeter path:
   • alias jmeter="sh /Users/user/Downloads/apache-jmeter-5.4.1/bin/jmeter"
6. Press key Esc and type :wq in order to write and quit the editor.
7. In order to apply the new changes present in the Zsh configuration file to our terminal window, we need to source the file manually (this happens automatically when you open iTerm). We source the changes by typing this command in the terminal window:
   • source ~/.zshrc
8. And now when you type the alias command added , jmeter in our case, will open JMeter GUI.

If you just want to run JMeter on your Mac, check our previous article.

With JMeter Cloud Load Testing Tool from LoadFocus, you can upload your Apache JMeter test scripts (.jmx files), run and analyze JMeter results from multiple world locations, everything in an easy to use UI.

Written by Bogdan Vazzolla.

LoadFocus is a cloud testing platform, a load and stress testing tool which provides the infrastructure to run tests with thousands of concurrent users, from multiple cloud locations, in less than a few minutes, keep history of the results, compare different runs to inspect performance improvements or performance degradation. It also supports running JMeter load tests from the cloud and monitoring and audit web and mobile performance.

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