trying to run PLP on Sheetal's Mac

[sohum sohoni]

Guys,

I was going through the new manual and thought that I'd follow the instructions on a computer that's never seen PLP. Sheetal's MacBook is from 2007 and has OS X 10.5.8. When I tried to follow the steps for downloading RXTX it asked me to get XCode first. I was not successful in finding it (kept on leading me to the App store for a newer version of Mac OS) and so I went ahead with the steps to get RXTX installed. I downloaded the files and copied them to /Library/Java/Extensions. 

When I tried to run PLP by clicking on the icon, it looked like it was doing something and then nothing happened. When I tried from the command line, I got the following message.

Exception in thread "AWT-EventQueue-0" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: javax/swing/GroupLayout$Group

at plptool.gui.ProjectDriver.<init>(ProjectDriver.java:177)

at plptool.gui.PLPToolApp.startup(PLPToolApp.java:64)

at org.jdesktop.application.Application$1.run(Application.java:171)

at java.awt.event.InvocationEvent.dispatch(InvocationEvent.java:209)

at java.awt.EventQueue.dispatchEventImpl(EventQueue.java:499)

at java.awt.EventQueue.access$000(EventQueue.java:80)

at java.awt.EventQueue$1.run(EventQueue.java:462)

at java.awt.EventQueue$1.run(EventQueue.java:461)

at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)

at java.security.AccessControlContext$1.doIntersectionPrivilege(AccessControlContext.java:84)

at java.awt.EventQueue.dispatchEvent(EventQueue.java:471)

at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpOneEventForHierarchy(EventDispatchThread.java:269)

at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForHierarchy(EventDispatchThread.java:190)

at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(EventDispatchThread.java:184)

at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(EventDispatchThread.java:176)

at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.run(EventDispatchThread.java:110)

Is there something that I've missed? How can I fix this? Is there something we need to add in the user manual so that someone else doesn't make the same mistake?

Sohum

[Randal Allison]

Oh boy. I never tested it on the Mac. When I get back from Seattle, I will find a work around and update the manual.

-Randy

[Wira Mulia]

Looks like you either have a really old JRE or your JRE is horribly broken... I am not familiar with how software in mac is organized, let alone Java apps...

[Randal Allison]

This is something I think we need to think about if it becomes too difficult to support OSX. If we have to have different versions and such, we may want to drop Mac support all together and leave it linux/windows only.

[Matthew Gaalswyk]

Where are you obtaining the RXTX binaries from? XCode should be on the 2nd install disc for OS X 10.5.8. I asked around about how one obtains it for older versions of OS X, they say that you would need to register on http://developer.apple.com/ (free) to obtain an older version of XCode if you don't have the discs. OS X should have a version of Java that's compatible with PLP. I hunted around and found this http://jlog.org/rxtx-mac.html - this binary might work. Is the error message you got below something you get when you do not have RXTX installed -- I don't see RXTX specific errors there. What version of the JRE is running on the Mac?

I hope to write an update later tonight on my own progress.

Thanks,
Matthew

[Wira Mulia]

I think I will need to catch startup errors and actually display an error dialog box instead of just silently dying like this. Still won't help with instances where java can't be found, but at least it'll be good if we can attribute silent deaths like this to JRE problem instead of other catchable runtime errors

[MFG]

This is on a friend's OS X 10.7.4 install:

~/ » java -version
java version "1.6.0_33"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_33-b03-424-11M3720)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 20.8-b03-424, mixed mode)

~/Downloads/plp-4.1/sw/PLPTool » java -jar PLPToolStatic.jar

PLP Software Tool version 4.1
Copyright 2010-2012 PLP Contributors.
This software is licensed under GPLv3.
Run with '--license' option for licensing information of third party software.

Jul 12 18:26:39 cjh-mba.local java[30918] <Error>: CGContextGetCTM: invalid context 0x0
Jul 12 18:26:39 cjh-mba.local java[30918] <Error>: CGContextSetBaseCTM: invalid context 0x0
Jul 12 18:26:39 cjh-mba.local java[30918] <Error>: CGContextGetCTM: invalid context 0x0
Jul 12 18:26:39 cjh-mba.local java[30918] <Error>: CGContextSetBaseCTM: invalid context 0x0
Jul 12 18:26:39 cjh-mba.local java[30918] <Error>: CGContextGetCTM: invalid context 0x0
Jul 12 18:26:39 cjh-mba.local java[30918] <Error>: CGContextSetBaseCTM: invalid context 0x0

However, the user reported that the application GUI ran and that he was able to create a new project. (This is without RXTX installed).