Coach Thrasher

jEdit on OSX 10.5.4

jEdit is a very lightweight text editor I've been using for years and years. Installation of jEdit on OSX 10.5.4 with JDK 1.6 fails due to a JNI incompatibility. Here's how to fix it.

Open the Info.plist file, and change:
1.5+
to:
1.5

This file should live here, if you're using Safari's download manager:
~/Downloads/jEdit.app/Contents/Info.plist

Now jEdit can be installed to your dock normally.

The problem (on my developer-centric machine) is that the default JVM is 1.6, and the JNI libraries fail to allow jEdit to launch. Apparently it's because the Java-Cocoa bridge is 32-bit. When running with JDK6, I was getting this error:

[jason@jmac MacOS]$ ./jedit 

[JavaAppLauncher] A 64-bit JVM is available for 1.6.0

[JavaAppLauncher] and it is the only version available

[JavaAppLauncher] JVMArchs not found in Java dictionary

10:16:04 AM [error] main: NSRuntime.loadLibrary(/usr/lib/java/libObjCJava.dylib) error.

10:16:04 AM [error] main: java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: /usr/lib/java/libObjCJava.A.dylib: 

10:16:04 AM [error] main:  at java.lang.ClassLoader$NativeLibrary.load(Native Method)

[SNIP]

Posted at 10:35AM Jul 05, 2008 by jason in General  |