Eclipse 3.6 with Java 7 coming to Mac OS X

The next release of the Eclipse IDE, version 3.6 codenamed "Helios", will run with OpenJDK 7 on Mac OS X. The Eclipse developer David Green, announced the development in a posting on his blog, saying "this will free us from Apple's oft-criticised and historically slow release cycle of the JVM". Mac OS X users are typically restricted to Apple's own port of Java which has in the past been slow to increment; for example Apple's Java 6 was released in April 2008, almost a year and a half after Java 6 was released by Sun.

With some trickery it had been possible to run Eclipse 3.5 with OpenJDK7, but the developers wanted to integrate the capability in Eclipse releases so that Mac OS X users would not be exposed to Apple's delays in porting Java.

Two problems in particular have been stopping developers using Eclipse with the in-development OpenJDK7, one that prevented the SWT native libraries loading and one which prevented applications for being launched under Eclipse. Both these and other issues have been resolved, according to Green, who gives instructions on how to get an integration build of Eclipse 3.6 to test the enhancements. Potential testers will also require a working OpenJDK7 on their Mac OS X system.

(djwm)