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.  

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:

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).