eclipse kepler (4.3) on a mac

Getting started

When going to the Eclipse site, I was greeted with a cool book looking page about Kepler.  Who Kepler is, what’s new, the link to download, etc.  kepler-book

Choosing a package

Eclipse has a nice chart comparing the features in each edition.  I’m excited to see git and maven got promoted to the Java EE edition.  In fact the Java EE edition is *almost* a superset of the Java edition now.  The download is 50MB bigger than last time.  And since Verizon wired the basement for FIOS but not any individual apartments yet, this means 30-45 minute download.  Now that I have the file eclipse-jee-kepler-R-macosx-cocoa-x86_64.tar, I can start.

Installing on A Mac was a small adventure

I did the usual of untarring and copying the eclipse folder into Applications.  I got an error: “Eclipse” is damaged and can’t be opened.  You should move it to the Trash.

I found a command here to get Gatekeeper to allow it:  xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/eclipse/Eclipse.app

Then I got: Failed to load the JNI shared library /Library/java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.7.0.jdk/Contents/Home/bin/../jre/lib/client/libjvm.dylib

I was on Java 7 update 17.  I updated to update 25, but that didn’t help.  I then tried using a launch startup script per the bug report.  Note that I needed to change two bolded lines to point to my install location.

#!/bin/bash
/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.7.0.jdk/Contents/Home/jre/bin/java \
-Djava.library.path=<strong>/Applications/eclipse/plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.cocoa.macosx.x86_64_1.1.200.v20130521-0416/eclipse_1507.so</strong> \
-Xms512m \
-Xmx2048m \
-Xdock:icon=../Resources/Eclipse.icns \
-XstartOnFirstThread \
-Dorg.eclipse.swt.internal.carbon.smallFonts \
-XX:MaxPermSize=256m \
-jar /Applications/eclipse/plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher_1.3.0.v20130327-1440.jar \
-os macosx \
-ws cocoa \
-arch x86_64 \
-showsplash \
-name Eclipse \
--launcher.appendVmargs \
-debug

It sounds like this will be fixed in Kepler SR  1.  In the meantime I renamed my script to end in .command so I can open it via the applications finder window (nice tip)

First Impressions

Since some of the plugins I was using are now built in and others I don’t use anymore (that I installed over the past year), I decided not to import my plugins from a previous installation and start anew.  It’s easy enough to install from the marketplace.

The significant plugins I use:

Plugin Purpose
Mongrel Tomcat integration supporting Tomcat 7.  (The version of Sysdeo I was using seems to have had that too but at least Mongrel looks more active.) Used the Sysdeo source code and forked it since Sysdeo isn’t getting updates anymore.
Ecl Emma Code coverage
PMD and FindBugs Static analysis
Subversive To access Subversion repositories
Groovy/Grails Tool Suite Groovy project/editor and console
Eclipse Memory Analyzer For finding memory leaks – must use update site rather than marketplace
Freemarker IDE Freemarker syntax highlighting and macro assistance.  Note that it is listed under the JBoss Tool Project.
Papyrus UML editor – under install new software > kepler > papyrus  (I don’t recommend Papyrus at this time.)
Python Python plugin/perspective

What excites me

  1. Mylyn connector improvements (for code review)
  2. Remove type arguments after content assist – this happened just often enjoy to be annoying
  3. IDE support for JUnit Assumptions

What frustrates me

  1. The mess about Mac support for Kepler.  It’s annoying launching from the command line (or even a command).

8 thoughts on “eclipse kepler (4.3) on a mac

  1. Pingback: Creating a UML diagram with Eclipse Papyrus | Down Home Country Coding With Scott Selikoff and Jeanne Boyarsky

  2. Doing the following from the terminal prompt will work around the client libjvm.dylib issue without the script hack you’re doing.

    $ cd /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.7.0_25.jdk/Contents/Home/jre/lib
    $ sudo ln -s server client

  3. David,
    That didn’t work for me. I got the same error after creating the link. Leaving your comment up in hopes it helps someone else. Or at least someone can validate/refute whether it works for them!

  4. The symlink trick’s close. The problem is that client/libjvm.dylib is i386 only instead of x86_64. Move it out of the way and do

    $ ln -s ../server/libjvm.dylib libjvm.dylib

    in the client directory. Then Eclipse launches fine. The implications of doing this escape me, though…

  5. Pingback: eclipse luna | Down Home Country Coding With Scott Selikoff and Jeanne Boyarsky

  6. This problem went away with Eclipse Luna for Java (good.) I needed to install the 32 bit C/C++ Eclipse package on my 64 bit Mac (don’t) ask and got the same error. Same solution worked. Just had to change the paths for that package:

    /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0.jdk/Contents/Home/jre/bin/java \
    -Djava.library.path=/Applications/eclipse/plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.cocoa.macosx.x86_64_1.1.200.v20140521-0744/eclipse_1601.so \
    -Xms512m \
    -Xmx2048m \
    -Xdock:icon=../Resources/Eclipse.icns \
    -XstartOnFirstThread \
    -Dorg.eclipse.swt.internal.carbon.smallFonts \
    -XX:MaxPermSize=256m \
    -jar /Applications/eclipse/plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher_1.3.0.v20140415-2008.jar \
    -os macosx \
    -ws cocoa \
    -arch x86_64 \
    -showsplash \
    -name Eclipse \
    –launcher.appendVmargs \
    -data /Users/jeanne/Documents/workspace \
    -debug

  7. Using Eclipse Luna and getting error when trying to open eclipse “-vm /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.7.0.jdk/Contents/Home/bin/java” Please help

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