manpage for eclipse 3.5.1 in Karmic badly outdated

Bug #494065 reported by Oliver Joos
8
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
eclipse (Ubuntu)
Fix Released
Medium
Unassigned

Bug Description

Binary package hint: eclipse

$ man eclipse # says:
...
NOTES
       Eclipse will search for a java virtual machine in this order:
       VM given with the "-vm <JVM>" argument,
       $JAVA_HOME/bin/java from $HOME/.eclipse/eclipserc and
       then in the environment
       and at last use /usr/bin/java.

In an up-to-date Karmic 9.10 only "-vm <JVM>" works. $JAVA_HOME does not make eclipse 3.5.1+repack~1-0ubuntu3 to run with another JVM. $HOME/.eclipse/eclipserc seems not to be interpreted either. At least the script "/usr/bin/eclipse" does not do this. Both worked in earlier Ubuntu/Eclipse releases.

If this change is intended in Eclipse 3.5.x by Sun or whoever, Ubuntu could emulate the old behavior in the script "/usr/bin/eclipse" by sourcing $HOME/.eclipse/eclipserc and then starting eclipse with "-vm $JAVA_HOME/bin/java". Or at least the man page should be corrected.

Using "update-alternatives --config java" is not adequate, because this changes the JVM for *every* installed Java app.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Tue Dec 8 15:44:45 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release i386 (20091028.5)
Package: eclipse 3.5.1+repack~1-0ubuntu3
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=de_CH.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-16.52-generic
SourcePackage: eclipse
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-16-generic i686

Related branches

Revision history for this message
Oliver Joos (oliver-joos) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Niels Thykier (niels-thykier) wrote :

Hi

Thank you for your bug report and for helping making eclipse in Ubuntu better. The short story is "only -vm is supposed to work" and the manpage is out of date.

The use of JAVA_HOME and .eclipse/eclipserc were Debian/Ubuntu workarounds since /usr/bin/java (at that time usually gcj) tended to give a lot of problems with eclipse. These days /usr/bin/java is by default provided by openjdk6, which is in a lot better shape.

I will leave this bug open until the manpage has been updated.

Out of interest, which java provides your /usr/bin/java and which one do you want to use for eclipse?

~Niels

Changed in eclipse (Ubuntu):
status: New → Confirmed
summary: - eclipse 3.5.1 in Karmic does not respect JAVA_HOME anymore
+ manpage for eclipse 3.5.1 in Karmic badly outdated
Revision history for this message
Oliver Joos (oliver-joos) wrote :

Only "-vm <JVM>" is ok for me.

I had no problems with eclipse and openjdk6. But other java apps (TV-Browser, Azureus) still do have severe problems and crashes if not run with sun-java6. So I tried to run Eclipse with sun-java6, just to be on the safe side. But I did not see any changes or speed-up/slow-down yet.

So for eclipse openjdk6 seems as good as sun-java6. I just like "the right to choose". ;-)

Benjamin Drung (bdrung)
Changed in eclipse (Ubuntu):
status: Confirmed → Triaged
Benjamin Drung (bdrung)
Changed in eclipse (Ubuntu):
importance: Undecided → Medium
Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

This bug was fixed in the package eclipse - 3.5.1+repack~3-0ubuntu2

---------------
eclipse (3.5.1+repack~3-0ubuntu2) lucid; urgency=low

  * Rebase to packaging from pkg-java/eclipse (thanks to Niels Thykier):
    + Set a sane file limit for osgi-bundles. (Closes: #558693, LP: #293573)
    + Inject update sites on first run. (LP: #460944)
    + Prevent conflict with swt-gtk's swt packages.
      - Rename our swt packages.
      - Do not install conflicting symlinks/files.
      (Closes: #541638, LP: #491880)
    + Imported patch from Fedora that fixes seg. faults in libpango.
      (LP: #445009)
    + Update manpage. (LP: #494065)
    + Bump Standards-Version to 3.8.4.
  * Re-add versioned dependency on libcommons-el-java, libjetty-java,
    libservlet2.4-java; the packages are now available in Ubuntu.
  * Drop versioned dependency on liblucene2-java and libmx4j-java; they are not
    yet available in Ubuntu.
 -- Benjamin Drung <email address hidden> Sat, 30 Jan 2010 18:55:04 +0100

Changed in eclipse (Ubuntu):
status: Triaged → Fix Released
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