Important notes for Linux users (last updated Apr, 22, 2010)

[Alexander.Mitin]

Minimum requirements:

1. Sun's JDK, 32-bit or 64-bit (OpenJDK is not recommended but acceptable, GCJ and others are strongly not recommended);
2. Eclipse, 32-bit or 64-bit;
3. Firefox 3.0.x-3.6.x/xulrunner 1.9.0.x-1.9.2.x (do not install Firebug);
4. Any mainstream, up-to-date Linux distro like Ubuntu, SuSE, Redhat, etc. (nothing experimental, please).

Works fine on Ubuntu 9.10 with latest updates applied, FedoraCore 10, RHEL5 (xulrunner 1.9.x.x required).

Notes:

1. If you have the something like "org.eclipse.swt.SWTError: No more handles (java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: no swt-mozilla-gtk-3347 or swt-mozilla-gtk in swt.library.path, java.library.path or the jar file)" or another message related to SWT Browser then this means that your SWT Browser (which used to render the designed UI) can't use (can't find) any mozilla/firefox/xulrunner (Gecko Runtime Environment -- GRE) installed in the system. This can be verified by displaying the Welcome Screen of Eclipse ("Help"->"Welcome"): if you see the simple screen instead of html-based rich text then you're running into this issue (the eclipse may even crash). If you haven't got SWT Browser widget working, you can't use the GWT Designer.
For possible solutions please see http://www.eclipse.org/swt/faq.php#browserlinux.
You may point the Eclipse to xulrunner using this sample script:


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./eclipse -vmargs -Dorg.eclipse.swt.browser.XULRunnerPath=/path/to/the/xulrunner


Xulrunner can be downloaded here: http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla ... r/releases (choose the latest supported version).

Also you may use the following sample script to point eclipse to certain GRE:


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export MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME=/usr/lib/my_firefox_dir
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
./eclipse



If you've got the message like this "libgwt-ll.so: undefined symbol JS_PropertyStub" than this means that you're using the outdated (obsolete) GRE. Try to run the eclipse against xulrunner as it described above.

2. If you see the "GWT initialization timeout" error, please check that the Browser able to connect to local host. GWT Designer uses internal (inproc) http-server to provide Browser with resources needed. Pay attention on 'http_proxy' and 'no_proxy' system environment variables. Please check http://www.eclipse.org/swt/faq.php#browserproxy as well. Also, deleting the '~/.mozilla/eclipse' profile may help.
For convenience, GWT Designer prints the address:port it's using at the startup.
Also, if you're using third-party GWT libs such as GXT (especially on slow machine) try just to increase wait time and heap amount.

3. If you're using non-mainstream Window Manager or have experienced problems with design pane (black or garbaged design canvas and so on), try to use 'Window->Preferences->WindowBuilder->Common->Disable Preview Window flickering workarounds' option.

4. [for GWT versions prior to 2.0] GWT Designer does support 64-bit Linux. However, if you want to do a test run of the designed application, you should configure your launch configuration to use 32-bit emulation, because GWT itself doesn't support 64-bit Linux.

5. If your eclipse process crashes while using 64-bit Linux and 64-bit Sun's VM try to run the Eclipse using interpreter mode of VM:


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./eclipse -vmargs -Xint


This is the bug of Sun's 64-bit VM, and definetely not a bug of GWT Designer.

6. Ubuntu 8.04 users may encounter the following issue:
libnspr4.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
The Firefox 3.0.x (xulrunner 1.9.0.x) update does not contain libnspr4.so though it is included in Firefox 3.0.x (xulrunner 1.9.0.x) distribution from Mozilla's ftp. The solution is to install the libnspr4-dev package:


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sudo apt-get install libnspr4-dev



7. The users of Firefox 3 (and later) & Eclipse 3.3 may be affected of this Eclipse bug:
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=213194
This bug has been fixed in Eclipse 3.4RC4.