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Contents 1 Eclipse Install Using Ubutntu Packages 1.1 Launching Eclipse 1.2 Installed JRE 1.3 Wrong Version 1.4 Summary 1.5 Uninstall

Eclipse Install Using Ubutntu Packages

Note: As of the 'Breezy' release, I would not recommend this method.

sudo apt-get install eclipse-platform

The above command actually installed more than I thought it would, all of it good [I think]:

  ant eclipse-base eclipse-jdt eclipse-jdt-common eclipse-pde eclipse-pde-common eclipse-platform eclipse-platform-common
  eclipse-rcp eclipse-rcp-common eclipse-sdk junit libant1.6-java libgcj6-awt libjsch-java liblucene-java liblucene-java-doc
  libswt3.1-gtk-java libswt3.1-gtk-jni mozilla-browser

Suggested packages (haven't installed these yet):

  java-gcj-compat-dev java-compiler libbsf-java liboro-java liblog4j1.2-java libregexp-java jython antlr libbcel-java
  libcommons-logging-java libjdepend-java libgnumail-java libxml-commons-resolver1.1-java libcommons-net-java tomcat4
  latex-xft-fonts

The default install location is here:

/usr/lib/eclipse

A couple of things I noticed:

• /usr/lib/eclipse/links/local.link

path=/usr/local/lib/

This is actually really nice. Basically, this allows one to put an 'eclipse' folder with subfolders 'features' and 'plugins' in it all under the '/usr/local/lib/'. There's a couple of reasons why this is good: 1) this can be shared 2) it doesn't clutter up the rest of the core plugin/feature directories.

Launching Eclipse

The default launcher (Applications -> Programming -> Eclipse) unfortunately doesn't pick up the correct VM (even with the 'update-alternatives --config java'). By default it's using the gcj (/usr/lib/jvm/java-gcj/bin/java). Instead use this approach for launching (or something similar):

/usr/bin/eclipse -showlocation -data /usr/local/malcom/workspaces/workspace -vm /usr/lib/j2sdk1.5-sun -vmargs -Xmx512M

Installed JRE

So after running with the default VM (GCJ) - Eclipse now has the wrong installed JRE:

File:Malcom-wrong-vm.png

• Added a new one (/usr/lib/j2sdk1.5-sun) and then removed the GCJ one.

Wrong Version

The build id is @build@. This doesn't give me that nice warm feeling, so it would appear that the version that the package install, isn't the real 3.1.1. File:About-Eclipse-Platform.png

Summary

Overall, the package is pretty nice. It might work for some folks, but personally, there's a lot of manual steps, so that I think I'm going to stick with a manual installation of Eclipse. For one thing, I like to jump version a lot and having a more manual process is better.

Uninstall

I did this to uninstall:

sudo apt-get remove eclipse-base eclipse-jdt eclipse-jdt-common eclipse-pde eclipse-pde-common eclipse-platform eclipse-platform-common eclipse-rcp eclipse-rcp-common eclipse-sdk