# Eclipse Sucks under FreeBSD?



## disappearedng (Jan 18, 2009)

Hey everyone
I don't mean to sound disrespectful to the ports maintainer and anyone associated with the eclipse port, but eclipse, and eclipse-devel sucks under the FreeBSD environment. 

I have disabled IPv6 support and have successfully installed a few plugins for eclipse, like aptana and subclipse. Unfortunately, plugins like PDT (and PDT xdebug) still has a lot of issues when installing from its update site AND the all in one tar downloaded from the eclipse PDT homepage.

My question is: has any1 here manage to get PDT working for eclipse-devel (or eclipse)? Why are *both* eclipse and eclipse-devel so badly translated into FreeBSD? Why have I, and many others through searching in Google, encountered so much problems with eclipse and its variants under this environment? What is the main source of difference between installing eclipse here and in a linux environment?

I am seriously considering installing a separate linux operating system that offers more support for development-related projects.


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## orasis (Jan 18, 2009)

I cannot see how anyone could take offense to that... FreeBSD, for the desktop at least, has been losing to Linux for a long, long time now. 

I think that I will keep FreeBSD as a web/ssh server but move to Linux for the Desktop ... 

To play Zsnes with my joystick on FreeBSD I have to jump through hoops while on Linux (and interestingly enough on OpenBSD) I "plug and play."


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## randux (Jan 18, 2009)

I don't use Eclipse and I think it's a stretch to equate Eclipse with support for development projects.

#1 You didn't post any specifics on your problems. Your post looks like whining and even if somebody wanted to help you, they couldn't, because you didn't enumerate specific difficulties, messages, issues etc.

#2 FreeBSD and Linux are free as in free. Nobody gets paid to do what you want, and nobody is going to lose sleep if you "seriously consider installing a separate Linux operating system...". I run Linux and many other OS because not every OS does everything well, and not every piece of software runs well on every OS. If there were one single best OS, then everybody would run only it. That hasn't happened for the PC yet.

#3 Some (most) software is badly written and has all kinds of dependencies on facilities that may not exist on an OS and box other than the one it was written on. Guys who don't get paid often use their personal free time and try to shoehorn crappy code written for platform X to run on platform Y. Sometimes it's just too hard to do that and it becomes not worth it.

I don't think FreeBSD is high on Sun's list of target platforms when they write a new JVM. That could be a reason why Eclipse doesn't work well (as you say) on FreeBSD.


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## disappearedng (Jan 18, 2009)

I don't hate FreeBSD. In fact, I like FreeBSD so much that I only ever want 1 operating system to run everything that I need: servers, development and other stuff. 

Sometimes it's just frustrating that something you like so much will function so badly because of issues like jvm. BTW I am no advanced user: I have used FreeBSD for almost 2 years and there are some concepts in this operating system that I like seriously.

However, I regret to say that because of certain issues I have to abandon FreeBSD and use some other operating system. This is why I whine about it. 

Just a comment: Why doesn't FreeBSD port a linux version, with a linux kernel, and fight against other OS like debian or redhat?


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## Djn (Jan 18, 2009)

It's not like that would even help with the software issues you mention.


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## disappearedng (Jan 18, 2009)

well then why does packages, like Java, operate so differently on the FreeBSD environment?


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## ale (Jan 18, 2009)

disappearedng said:
			
		

> well then why does packages, like Java, operate so differently on the FreeBSD environment?


What is different in Java?


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## Djn (Jan 18, 2009)

When there are differences, they're more likely to be for userland reasons (different libc, different file system layout, different command line tools etc.) than kernel reasons. Or at least that's the impression I get.


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## hippo (Jan 24, 2009)

disappearedng,

Have you tried to download and install Eclipse on your own (not from ports) ? 
My wife does so on Linux, because she's never happy with the packaged version and wants  to run the latest release. It's not as "clean" as installing from ports but if it works ... As far as I know, Eclipse doesn't require any OS specific configuration. You just need the adequate java VM.


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## kamikaze (Jan 24, 2009)

I'm perfectly happy with the way eclipse runs on FreeBSD and have quite a number of plugins installed as well (through the FreeBSD Ports). So I'm slightly mystified about the nature of your problems, which you haven't specified unfortunately, so this will remain a meta discussion and it is unlikely that anything useful comes from that.

I also wonder why you want FreeBSD to fight other operating systems or be like another operating system. Why are you not simply using said other operating system? This is not a popularity contest (at least it's not meant to be).


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## ale (Jan 24, 2009)

hippo said:
			
		

> Have you tried to download and install Eclipse on your own (not from ports) ?
> My wife does so on Linux, because she's never happy with the packaged version and wants  to run the latest release. It's not as "clean" as installing from ports but if it works ... As far as I know, Eclipse doesn't require any OS specific configuration. You just need the adequate java VM.


Look at the file your wife downloaded!
AFAIK, Eclipse uses the swt toolkit which is compiled against native libraries. That's why you can find version for different OS instead of just one compressed archive as should be possible with a pure java application.
Netbeans for example offers various download but there is also a tar.gz version that you can run on any jvm provided that the implementation respect the specifics. You can extract the distfile used for FreeBSD and run it on windows or linux.

EDIT:
If you look at files directory under the eclipse port, you will find some .c files...

EDIT2:
Some time ago, I tried downloading the linux version of eclipse and run it with linuxlator and linux-jdk port.
I had some crashes but it was with linux_base-fc4 but.
I was even able to run the webtools plugins using a tomcat downloaded for the need (not the one from ports)
Maybe you can have more luck trying with the recent linux_base.


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