Close-up of a repaired break in a copper wire fence against a pale overcast sky.

Devon January 24, 2008 1 min read

Eclipse StartOnFirstThread Error (and fix!)

Eclipse crashes on Leopard? Add one JVM flag. Problem solved.

This appears to be an issue with the JVM under Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5), but I started getting the following error within Eclipse when using the ResourceBundleEditor plugin:

It also apparently happens with other plugins/apps and is an issue with the AWT kit in the new JVM. After pouring through all of my Eclipse config files and determining that I definitely was NOT specifying StartOnFirstThread anywhere, I found this fix:

Within the Eclipse application bundle, in the file Contents/MacOS/eclipse.ini, add this line:

-Djava.awt.headless=true

Save the file, and restart Eclipse. Problem solved.