The TLDR:
.config("spark.master", "local")
a list of the options for spark.master in spark 2.2.1
I ended up on this page after trying to run a simple Spark SQL java program in local mode. To do this, I found that I could set spark.master using:
SparkSession spark = SparkSession
.builder()
.appName("Java Spark SQL basic example")
.config("spark.master", "local")
.getOrCreate();
An update to my answer:
To be clear, this is not what you should do in a production environment. In a production environment, spark.master should be specified in one of a couple other places: either in $SPARK_HOME/conf/spark-defaults.conf (this is where cloudera manager will put it), or on the command line when you submit the app. (ex spark-submit --master yarn).
If you specify spark.master to be 'local' in this way, spark will try to run in a single jvm, as indicated by the comments below. If you then try to specify --deploy-mode cluster, you will get an error 'Cluster deploy mode is not compatible with master "local"'. This is because setting spark.master=local means that you are NOT running in cluster mode.
Instead, for a production app, within your main function (or in functions called by your main function), you should simply use:
SparkSession
.builder()
.appName("Java Spark SQL basic example")
.getOrCreate();
This will use the configurations specified on the command line/in config files.
Also, to be clear on this too: --master and "spark.master" are the exact same parameter, just specified in different ways. Setting spark.master in code, like in my answer above, will override attempts to set --master, and will override values in spark-defaults.conf, so don't do it in production. Its great for tests though.
also, see this answer.
which links to a list of the options for spark.master and what each one actually does.
a list of the options for spark.master in spark 2.2.1