2024-03 fail to start

[jarsudsco]

Apologies if this isn't the right place but I've been going round in circles for over an hour. My Eclipse updated to 2024-03 earlier and now won't start. I get the 2024-03 splash screen then "an error has occurred". I'll attach a consolelog. Any help would be much appreciated.
consolelog.txt

[akurtakov]

I see many "Unable to resolve plug-in "io.sloeber.application"." . Would you please try with fresh download as this one seems to be update ?

[merks]

The most serious problem here appears to be this where the source lines of the exception do not correspond to the latest version of SWT's Image class:

Definitely creating a new installation when this one is not updating properly is the path of lease resistance.

[merks]

Just now I tested downloading and unzipping https://www.eclipse.org/downloads/download.php?file=/technology/epp/downloads/release/2023-12/R/eclipse-committers-2023-12-R-win32-x86_64.zip and then doing a Help -> Check for Updates to update to 2024-03. That worked and restarted without a problem. So there doesn't appear to be a general problem with updates not updating everything properly.

[jarsudsco]

Thanks for the replies @akurtakov and @merks, I appreciate your time. I'm not having a dig at anyone but I've had to re-install Eclipse more than any other software I have ever used, I truly dread the quarterly updates. There goes my Thursday...

[merks]

Note that it was the update of the jre version that caused the problem. I (the JustJ project) provide those as they become available from Adoptium and that update came too late in the release cycle to fix after it was first noticed. If you’d checked for updates even earlier, the problem would still have happened when the jre was updated.

[jarsudsco]

@merks thanks again, that's a bit above my head, but interesting, in fact I thought Eclipse used the JRE installed on my machine, by me - in fact occasionally, Eclipse stops working when the "wrong" version of the JRE gets updated on my machine and inserts itself into the path above the right one, but I know how to fix that by simply adjusting the path. Call me old fashioned but my attitude to updates is generally, if it's not broke, don't fix it. I'd rather have software that's bullet-proof rather than have a few extra features I've previously lived without. Thanks again :-)

[merks]

It really depends on how you installed. If you used the installer, yes you can choose your own JVM. If you downloaded a packaged install, it has an JRE contained in it and that one will update as updates become available. In either case, the eclipse.ini contains two lines like this:

-vm
C:/Program Files/Java/jdk-11.0.13+8/bin

And that might reference a JDK on your machine or might reference a JustJ that was installed into the product; the latter updates automatically, the former might end up broken if the reference JDK is removed/uninstalled from the system.

[jarsudsco]

Again that's interesting, thanks. Those lines you quoted actually do NOT appear in my brand new eclipse.ini. But when I ran the installer it appeared to pick up the location of the Java that was in my path. If I had known this I might have preferred the bundled version to avoid exactly the situation you describe but there seems to be no Java installed with this Eclipse install. I'll try and remember for next time.

[merks]

Ah, I see! Yes, the installer tries to be smart so when you choose the JRE in the installer and it the system default Java version, it avoids writing the -vm property so that you can update the system Java version and your installation will use it. One could have some type of option to "explicitly use this one and set it into my eclipse.ini," but that's awfully technical for the casual use.

The installer does give the option to use a JustJ JRE:

Then it would be updated whenever there is a new one. But probably most folks let the choice be the default.

[jarsudsco]

I seem to be back up and running with most plugins working but only a small number of projects so far as tests. @merks thanks again for your time.