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jEdit won’t start after OS X Java update

I noticed that jEdit would no longer start on my MacBook Pro with OS X 10.5.5.  I’d try to run jEdit via Quicksilver as usual, but it wouldn’t open.  Double-clicking on the jEdit application icon was just as useless.  Nothing happened.  I checked for anything that could be blocking it and restarted my laptop with no change.  I upgraded to the latest version of jEdit but it still wouldn’t run.

It turns out that the latest Java update from Apple managed to break jEdit’s launch.  After a decent amount of Googling, I ran into the solution.  Basically, it involves replacing a symlink with its target.

rm /Applications/jEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/jedit
cp /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Resources/MacOS/JavaApplicationStub /Applications/jEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/jedit<br />

And it even came with an explanation:

The basic problem has to do with symlinks to the latest java application stub. It used to be that you could symlink to the stub, so that you could use whatever was installed on the user’s system. Now it seems that there are some problems with the launcher looking for files in the wrong directory, and using the actual stub instead of a symlink is required.

I decided to copy it here just to improve the odds of finding a solution for the next person.  Thanks to those folks who discovered & reported the solution.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 8th, 2008 at 8:14 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

7 Responses to “jEdit won’t start after OS X Java update”

  1. Harold Says:
    October 9th, 2008 at 2:17 pm

    Thx for fix you save my developer life ! I love Jedit.

  2. monty hall Says:
    October 16th, 2008 at 10:21 pm

    Hell ya - I was this close to downloading textmate. Cheers!

  3. earth Says:
    October 18th, 2008 at 12:38 am

    Thanks much, I had resorted to starting it from the command line… java -jar /path/to/jedit.jar

    But that results in ugliness in the Dock and it was Not Good Enough for my partner. Your solutions came up immediately through google and was a trivial-ish fix. I’m surprised my other java apps still run properly.

  4. Rayman Brint Says:
    October 27th, 2008 at 1:07 pm

    Thank you for mirroring this solution. It fixed my problem.
    :) Cheers

  5. edzob Says:
    October 31st, 2008 at 4:12 am

    Thank you for this .. this saved my jedit. because it is a great editor.

  6. Luc Van Bogaert Says:
    October 31st, 2008 at 12:45 pm

    Thanks for posting this year. jEdit now works again. Like another poster, I was already thinking of getting another text editor, but it would be damn hard to replace jedit.

  7. Joe Says:
    November 4th, 2008 at 12:48 pm

    Saved my day - thx

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