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Eclipse will not start after changing java version in eclipse.ini [message #1801787]

Sat, 26 January 2019 18:40

Eclipse User

I installed Eclipse neon a few years back in my computer running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. Today, I installed the Aptana plugins for web development. When I tried to use it with Aptana Studio, some of the editors weren't working. After a lot of Googling, I found an issue with the Aptana plugin that doesn't like Java 8 so I set the vm in eclipse.ini to use the Oracle 1.7 jdk and then eclipse refused to load. I replaced 1.7 with 1.8 again and eclipse still errors out and says check the log. I look at the eclipse log and see hundreds of lines of java generated gibberish that tells me nothing. I have tried java-8-openjdk-amd64 which was running Eclipse for a couple of years and I am now pointing Eclipse at jdk1.8.0_131 which is Oracle. What should the vm line in the .ini file be pointing to or could something else have happened to be causing my problem?

[Updated on: Sat, 26 January 2019 19:00] by Moderator

Re: Eclipse will not start after changing java version in eclipse.ini [message #1801799 is a reply to message #1801787]

Sun, 27 January 2019 00:53

Eclipse User

You should show what your change looks like. And just because you can't interpret the log doesn't mean the the people helping you won't find the answer/cause among the tea leaves. In any case, Java 8 is already quite old, and only relatively old versions of Eclipse don't require Java 8.

On Windows it looks like this:

-vm
C:/Program Files/Java/jdk1.8.0_121/bin

This must appear near the start of the file and definitely before the -vmargs section which must be the last section because everything that follows is an argument to the VM instead of an argument to the Eclipse. Note that this references the folder that contains java/javaw executable.

Re: Eclipse will not start after changing java version in eclipse.ini [message #1801817 is a reply to message #1801799]

Sun, 27 January 2019 16:24

Eclipse User

Wow, what's with the hostile attitude? I only stated a fact about why I am at a loss to troubleshoot this myself. I do not have the knowledge of the scripts that comprise Eclipse, so java errors naming the script lines that the error happened on do not mean anything to me. Again, the only thing the log contains are untrapped Java code errors. One other thing though, there is one intelligible line. It's a line that prefaces all those Java generated lines and says "java.lang.NullPointerException". Java is running into a whole bunch of variables that must not have been initialized but, again, meaningless to me since I have no knowledge of these scripts.

Let me say that the vm path seems to work whether I specify Java as a Fully Qualified line to execute or just the path to the /bin directory because I tried it both ways. They both generate Java thrown error lines, at least so I have to assume because this log file is unreasonably void of any time stamps on entry lines so I could see if the last lines were new. The vm path that I presently have in my .ini file is; "/usr/lib/jvm/jdk1.8.0_131/bin".

I came here because I do need help from people that understand what goes on behind the coding curtain and could possibly offer a little help with this. Perhaps, someone who recognizes this issue and can offer possibilities. What would help me immensely is if I could look at someone's working eclipse.ini file that was installed into Ubuntu, hopefully ver. 16.04 LTS, just to make sure that I hadn't accidentally altered or removed another line in the file without knowing. I use Ubuntu on my desktop and run CentOS in my servers on line. I haven't messed with Microsoft in 20 years.

Re: Eclipse will not start after changing java version in eclipse.ini [message #1801822 is a reply to message #1801817]

Sun, 27 January 2019 23:01

Eclipse User

Sorry if that seems hostile. Of course you're here because you weren't able to do figure it out on your own. But we can only help you if you give us details about the problem. So showing how you changed the eclipse.ini seems a good idea; then we could correct any obvious mistake. And with respect to the log, clearly the log is there to help diagnose problem, so without knowing what you changed, and without knowing any details about the symptoms from the log, it's all only guess work. And note that calling something gibberish is kind of a value judgement that one could interpret as hostile, though I'm sure that wasn't your intent.

Note you can delete the log, and then all the things in it are new. And there are stamps.

Yes, I believe you can specify the folder or the exact executable.

Hopefully someone will post their eclipse.ini, but I'm still not sure why you don't post yours. The first error message out of a clean log would also help.

One thing you can do that requires no waiting is to download this and look at the eclipse.ini as it's freshly distributed:

https://www.eclipse.org/downloads/download.php?file=/technology/epp/downloads/release/2018-12/R/eclipse-jee-2018-12-R-linux-gtk-x86_64.tar.gz

I don't know if you might be having problems with a 32bit VM versus a 64 bit VM....

Re: Eclipse will not start after changing java version in eclipse.ini [message #1801855 is a reply to message #1801822]

Mon, 28 January 2019 08:49

Eclipse User

Thank you!

Re: Eclipse will not start after changing java version in eclipse.ini [message #1801874 is a reply to message #1801855]

Mon, 28 January 2019 16:16

Eclipse User

I was going to attach my log file and .ini file but I can't find a method to do this in this forum page.
Interesting, I put this post into edit mode and there it is, the upload file button.

Attachment: .log
(Size: 145.40KB, Downloaded 182 times)
Attachment: eclipse.ini
(Size: 0.70KB, Downloaded 194 times)

[Updated on: Mon, 28 January 2019 17:29] by Moderator

Re: Eclipse will not start after changing java version in eclipse.ini [message #1801881 is a reply to message #1801874]

Mon, 28 January 2019 23:45

Eclipse User

Reading the tea leaves, I can see that the stack trace shows the Eclipse code to be here (line number changed since the version you're using):

https://git.eclipse.org/c/platform/eclipse.platform.text.git/tree/org.eclipse.ui.workbench.texteditor/src/org/eclipse/ui/texteditor/WordWrapToggleAction.java#n69

Here it calls out to the Aptana editor implementation where there is a problem:

java.lang.IllegalAccessError: com.aptana.editor.html.HTMLEditor.isWordWrapEnabled()Z

When I Google error message string, yes Google reads tea leaves as well :-) I find this:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/40576628/eclipse-neon-does-not-start

And also this:

https://github.com/aptana/studio3/issues/430

And from that issue I see they made this change:

https://github.com/aptana/studio3/commit/a55d8792f7deb6367ffb3a2e791ccb89d1632fc4

So it appears you have no problems with your Java version but instead you either need to install an older version of Eclipse or a newer version of Aptana .

Re: Eclipse will not start after changing java version in eclipse.ini [message #1801959 is a reply to message #1801881]

Tue, 29 January 2019 18:18

Eclipse User

I noticed that most of the error lines were from Aptana as well. If it weren't the fact that after I added Aptana to Eclipse, it started up just fine and seemed to be working. What wasn't working was the HTML editor and a few others. That is why I started to search for answers and tried Java v1.7. That's when Eclipse started to fail on startup. So, I think that I did something beyond installing the latest version of Aptena that is keeping it from starting. For now, I am going to try uninstalling Aptana but I don't know how I will do that since I can't get it to start up.

[Updated on: Tue, 29 January 2019 18:20] by Moderator

Re: Eclipse will not start after changing java version in eclipse.ini [message #1801972 is a reply to message #1801959]

Wed, 30 January 2019 02:10

Eclipse User

The one link I gave you has a hack for how to make Eclipse forget about the open editors, which looks like what's failing:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/40576628/eclipse-neon-does-not-start

I.e., delete the <workspace>/metadata.plugins/org.eclipse.e4.workbench/workbench.xmi which records the state of the workbench, including which editors are open.

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