"The eclipse executable launcher was unable to locate its companion shared library"

4
votes

Firstly I know there are a lot of people asking this already and I have checked all of them and none of them have fixed my issue.

Whenever I try to open Eclipse Neon I get this error

The eclipse executable launcher was unable to locate its companion shared library

As said I have tried the fixes I have seen online including uninstalling Eclipse and java then reinstalling.

Eclipse was working a few weeks back but stopped when a windows update failed and I reverted to a previous state of windows. That's the only thing I can think of that may have caused this.

3
javaeclipse
Look at eclipse logs. Answer may be there. – talex
Possible duplicate of how to fix The eclipse executable launcher was unable to locate its companion shared library for windows 7? – Joe
Isn't it good to redownload it from eclipse website??? – prashant thakre
talex-Where are the logs? Joe-I will double check that I have not tried that already once I get back from classes and I can ask the teacher about it again. parashant thakre-I did redownload it from the eclipse website. – DragonHeart000
show you eclipse.ini folder, and double check that the jar listed inside are correct (good path and good names) – Asoub

3 Answers

10
votes

This solution worked for me:

As administrator (on MS-Windows, or as root or using sudo on GNU/Linux):

  1. uninstall* Eclipse

    • in the Eclipse installer "Bundle Pool" menu: "Cleanup Agent" then "Delete"

    • quit the installer

    • manually remove the existing installation folder if needed

  2. start the Eclipse installer

  3. turn off the "Bundle Pools" feature (in the installer menu)

  4. select the Eclipse flavor (e.g: Eclipse IDE for Java developers)

  5. select "Install"

As a plain user:

  1. start Eclipse

Side comments:

The Eclipse installer is maybe powerful, but in practice it is painful:

  • if one doesn't pay extra attention when running the installer several times, you soon have several install directories without noticing (java-neon, java-neon2, java-neon3) instead of a single updated folder

  • the proxy manager is buggy (I couldn't get it to work in my GNU/Linux environment, I had to set http_proxy and https_proxy myself in a terminal and then launch the installer)

I find it was easier in the past to install Eclipse, when there was no installer and only tar.gz or ZIP file to extract.

0
votes

Apparently the zip file was missing or contained a corrupted jar file and its associated directory. So I grabbed one from and older version of STS. I can now open STS. The version is: Spring Tool Suite 3.9.8\sts-bundle\sts-3.9.8.RELEASE

0
votes

If it is in Ubuntu, this is how to fixed it. This is a permission problem.

Option fix 1. locate your eclipse installation file and run from terminal

sudo ./eclipse

Option fix 2. create a file named eclipse.desktop using gedit on your desktop and add the following

[Desktop Entry] 
Type=Application 
Name=Eclipse 
Comment=Eclipse Integrated Development Environment 
Icon=/opt/eclipse/icon.xpm 
Exec=sudo /opt/eclipse/eclipse 
Terminal=true 
Categories=Development;IDE;Java; 
StartupWMClass=Eclipse

Right click and click Allow Launching. This will open terminal and will ask for the sudo password and run eclipse. Then, you need to add this file to the launcher. Open the launcher with the following command.

xdg-open ~/.local/share/applications

drag and drop the eclipse.desktop in the launcher folder. if it doesn't let you you might have to run it as sudo. Adding it to the launcher will allow you to search eclipse within the apps.

Option Fix 3.

Do fix 2 plus you will have to modify the sudoers file and add your username (CAREFUL YOU CAN LOSE ACCESS TO YOUR COMPUTER) if you do this you can change Terminal=true to false. This will make eclipse open without going to terminal and execute normally. If you are brave to modify sudoers file add at the END of the file.

username ALL=(ALL:ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL