Monday, February 11, 2008

Eclipse 3.4M5 solaris-gtk-x86 Build Script for Nexenta

Last week I finally installed NexentaCP Beta since the Gnusolaris Alpha apt repository has been taken offline. I probably could have found an indirect way to upgrade from Alpha to Beta but opted to wipe the window clean. The re-install was completely painless. Getting the nexenta-gnome desktop required adding the unstable repository to my /etc/apt/sources.list. Upgrading to the unstable repository gave me a small taste of the new Nexenta and the power of ZFS. The ease of the debian-based update manager had always impressed me, but adding ZFS to the mix makes the entire process worry-free as well. If an upgrade ever goes wrong, rolling back to a previous state is easy.

My Nexenta upgrade coincided nicely with the release of Eclipse 3.4M5. Because I had to re-install Eclipse anyway, and because a shiny new Nexenta install deserves nothing less than the latest-and-greatest Eclipse release, I downloaded the M5 source, installed the Eclipse build dependencies, ran my 3.4M4 modification script and with a few minor tweaks was quickly able to get Ganymede up and running, Java editor bread-crumb saccharine and all.
The script for building Eclipse 3.4 M5 for solaris-gtk-x86 can be downloaded from the solipse downloads page. Please be aware of the Nexenta-specific instructions for building the SWT library with gcc instead of SunStudio cc.
 


Eclipse 3.4 M5 running on Nexenta (Solaris) x86 GTK.
Breadcrumbs in the Java Editor are one of the sauciest additions to this latest release. Even though they do not add functionality that is not already in the workbench and they occupy precious screen real estate, they are great eye candy.