Java and FreeBSD

[mdh]

--- On Mon, 11/3/08, Spiros Papadopoulos <spap13 at googlemail.com> wrote:
> From: Spiros Papadopoulos <spap13 at googlemail.com>
> Subject: Java and FreeBSD
> To: "freebsd mailing list" <freebsd-questions at freebsd.org>
> Date: Monday, November 3, 2008, 1:26 PM
> Hi,
> 
> It is now more than eight months that i am not able to use
> FreeBSD. FreeBSD
> 
> version 6.1 was the last.
> 
> Back then trying to work with Eclipse and java on FreeBSD
> was quite tricky.
> 
> Can anyone please tell me what the current status is? For
> example can i use
> 
> ports to install everything and start working with Eclipse
> straight away...?
> Or
> 
> is Linux a better option?
> 
> What versions of FreeBSD and Eclipse would you recommend?
> Please feel free
> 
> to provide with as much information as you want.

My advice is to install the following ports in the following order:  

java/jdk16
java/eclipse-devel

eclipse-devel worked much better for me than did java/eclipse.  I also had trouble without getting jdk16 installed first.  It's been a while now, so I'm not exactly sure what all, but I think if you install those ports in that order, Eclipse will work for you.  You may also want to make a symlink from /usr/local/eclipse to /usr/local/eclipse-devel - this allows the Eclipse plugin ports to install properly.  Without it, they will not.  I've got several (Perl, Ruby, and a couple of others) installed from ports against eclipse-devel and they work fine once that symlink is in place.  

- mdh