Chapter 1. Eclipse 4.17

Significant package updates on RHEL 7

eclipse 4.16 4.17

Eclipse IDE and JDT/PDE plug-ins have been updated to version 4.17. For a more complete list of changes, see the Eclipse 4.17 – New and Noteworthy page. Notable enhancements include:

• The font used for tree and table views can now be customized with a font preference.
• Previous Edit Location navigation is now expanded to remember multiple edit locations.
• The GTK light theme is now improved.
• The interpretation of ASCII control characters in the Console View has been extended to now recognize null bytes.
• Content Assist in Java Editor now fully supports both substring and subword matches for types.
• An optimization tab has been added to JDT. It gathers cleanups that improve the time performance: the existing lazy operator cleanup and the regex precompiler cleanup.

eclipse-pydev 7.6.0 8.0.0

The PyDev plug-in has been updated to version 8.0.0, which most notably introduces improvements in type inference and fixed debugging issues. For details, see the upstream PyDev 8.0.0 release notes.

eclipse-egit/jgit 5.8.0 5.9.0

The Git integration plug-ins have been updated to version 5.9.0. For details, see the upstream EGit 5.9.0 release notes and JGit 5.9.0 release notes.

eclipse-webtools 3.18.0 3.19.0

The Web Tools Platform has been updated to version 3.19.0. For details, see the upstream Web Tools Platform 3.19 – New and Noteworthy pages.

eclipse-m2e 1.16.0 1.16.2

The Maven integration plug-in has been updated to version 1.16.2.

Deprecated functionality on RHEL 7

C/C++ Development Tooling (CDT)

CDT is no longer shipped as part of Eclipse. It can be installed additionally from the Install New Software wizard or Eclipse Marketplace.

Eclipse no longer enables the Red Hat Developer Toolset software collection automatically. To enable the collection, start Eclipse from the command line using the following command:

$ scl enable rh-eclipse devtoolset-10 eclipse

Linux Tools plug-ins

The Linux Tools plug-ins are no longer shipped as part of Eclipse. They can be installed additionally from the Install New Software wizard. The Eclipse Marketplace allows the installation of Linux Profiling Tools, Eclipse Vagrant Tooling, Eclipse Docker Tooling and RPM integration.

Known issues on RHEL 7

Initializing Eclipse Error Reporting System error

This error occurs when running a workspace created in an older version of Eclipse.

To work around this problem, start Eclipse with the -clean option to clear its dependency resolution cache:

$ scl enable rh-eclipse "eclipse -clean"

Eclipse will start without this error message.

NullPointerExceptions

NullPointerExceptions can occur when you install a plug-in from a third-party update site. In that case, Eclipse fails to start with a NullPointerException in the workspace log file.

To work around this problem, restart Eclipse with the -clean option to clear its dependency resolution cache:

On RHEL 7:

$ scl enable rh-eclipse "eclipse -clean"

Eclipse will start normally.

The rh-eclipse-tycho package conflicts with the same package from earlier collections

For example: rh-eclipse48-tycho:

As a result, the installation of the rh-eclipse-tycho package may fail when the rh-eclipse48-tycho package is already installed.

You only need Tycho if you want to build or rebuild Eclipse or its plug-ins need Tycho. If needed, uninstall the rh-eclipse48-tycho package before installing the rh-eclipse-tycho package using this command:

$ yum remove rh-eclipse48-tycho

The installation of the rh-eclipse-tycho package will now succeed.

PyDev users may experience issues with the pip integration

Modules that are pre-installed by the system or RHSCL Python cannot be uninstalled by pip. Attempts to do so will result in permission denied errors.

PyDev shortcut to manage Python modules does not work

Using the Ctrl+2 shortcut and selecting pip does not function properly. Attempts to use this shortcut therefore result in an SWTException in the workspace log.

Users can continue to manage their Python modules using the PyDev > Interpreters preference.

Incompatibilities between Eclipse Subclipse and base RHEL Subversion

Working copies of Subversion repositories created with Eclipse Subclipse are incompatible with the base RHEL version of Subversion. Using the svn command on such working copies may result in the following error:

$ svn up
svn: E155021: This client is too old to work with the working copy

To work around this problem, use the pure Java implementation of Subversion used by Eclipse Subclipse on the command line:

# yum install rh-eclipse-svnkit-cli # Command line support for SVNKit

Now, use the jsvn command anywhere you would normally use the svn command:

$ jsvn up
Updating '.':
At revision 16476.