bits4life » Eclipse

Fixing Eclipse for Ubuntu Karmic Koala 9.10

koma — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:44:15 +0000

Today I upgraded my Ubuntu installation to the newly released Karmic Kaola. Except for a couple of glitches during the upgrade process (maybe later more about this), I was able to login to my updated system about an hour later. I opened up Eclipse (running 3.5 – Galileo) to continue my Java development tasks. But very soon I noticed the upgrade introduced severe issues with my favorite IDE, most notably, the buttons on most dialog boxes could not be pushed anymore. Here’s how I managed to fix it ….

The new Ubuntu release 9.10 brings version 2.18 of GTK+ to the desktop. GTK+ is a multi-platform toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces. Offering a complete set of widgets, the GTK+ is suitable for projects ranging from small one-off tools to complete application suites. In version 2.18, client side windows are introduced which brings nicer redrawing and resizing, as demonstrated in the video :

Some applications – Eclipse, but also Acroread – assume that they can just operate on the X windows corresponding to their GDK windows without ever telling GDK, which causes some widgets to exhibit weird behaviour. Bug 287307 was filed with the Eclipse foundation and this is fixed for the upcoming 3.6 release.

Fortunately, the GTK+ people provide a switch to turn off the client side windows. So to work around the bug with Eclipse pre-3.6, just make sure you set environment variable GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=1

#!/bin/sh
export GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=1
/home/koen/eclipse-galileo/eclipse

Start coding

Eclipse Ganymede suffering from NoClassDefFoundError SWTResourceUtil

koma — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 12:00:19 +0000

Several users of Eclipse Ganymede out there are reporting a java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError for class SWTResourceUtil. That’s because some plugins (like the Hibernate Tools and Subversive) are still relying on the presence of this class that was present in older versions of Eclipse.

Here’s how you can fix this.

Download the previous version of eclipse. I still have my copy of Eclipse 3.2.2 laying around. In the plugins directory of your Eclipse installation, locate the workbench jar. For my Ubuntu installation of 3.2.2 I find it under this path : /usr/lib/eclipse/plugins/org.eclipse.ui.workbench_3.2.2.M20070119-0800.jar.

Browse to org/eclipse/ui/internal/util to locate the SWTResourceUtil.class file :

Extract the file from the jar file (a jar file is basically a zip file). Now locate the workbench jar file under the plugins directory from your Ganymede installation. Here’s where I find mine : /home/koen/eclipse-ganymede/plugins/org.eclipse.ui.workbench_3.4.2.M20090127-1700.jar

Now simply insert the SWTResourceUtil.class file in this jar at the same directory location of course.

Done

Easy screen mockups with WireframeSketcher

koma — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 11:24:34 +0000

As software developer it is very useful to reflect on the UI you are creating before you start coding. That’s when you need create screen mockups. There are many open source and commercial tools on the market. The latest and greatest newcomer in this area is WireframeSketcher.

What makes this product so great ? First of all, it integrates perfectly in Eclipse, the IDE of choice for me and most other Java developers (sorry Netbeans guys). Installation is standard, add the WireframeSketcher update site and click install. At least Eclipse 3.3 is required to use WireframeSketcher.

Creating mockups was never easier. Start by opening the sketching perspective.

You see all available widgets in a panel on the right, nicely arranged in categories if you like. Choose new -> screen and drag the widgets on the screen.

WireframeSketcher helps you to nicely outline your widgets. Whenever two or more widgets are outlined to the left, right or in the middle, a blue line appears indicating the common outline.

When you’re done with your mockup, you can generate png files from your screen and distribute it to your developers, or use it in your software specifications. You can even generate the png files using a command line tool.

I have nothing but good to say about WireframeSketcher : it does its job and it does it well. Simple – fast – easy.