Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Launching Multiple Instances of Eclipse on Mac OS X

Doug Schaefer recently griped that Eclipse on Mac "gets no love." I don't really agree in general, but I don't have the time to debate that in detail. I do, however, have the time to provide a simple work-around to one of his gripes, the inability to launch multiple copies of Eclipse simultaneously. As Doug mentions, this is inherent behavior for OS X applications, not an Eclipse-specific problem. But, there's a simple way to launch additional instances if you're willing to perform a few mouse clicks.
The basics:
  1. Right-click (Command+click) on the Eclipse Doc icon and choose Show in Finder.
  2. Right-click on Eclipse.app and choose Show Packages Contents.
  3. Navigate to Contents > MacOS directory.
  4. Double-click the eclipse executable there to launch Eclipse. Make sure to select a different workspace than is already open.
Here's a short screencast demonstration (click the image to play):





6 comments:

Anonymous said...

could just pop open a terminal and use the command

open -n /'path to eclipse'/eclipse

Prakash G.R. said...

Eric,

Even much simpler way: Just double click the 'eclipse' file found along with the 'Eclipse.app' That would do.

http://twitter.com/Eclipse_Tips/status/12499484980

Unknown said...

I usually copy the Eclipse.app launcher, renaming it to whatever I like. Very useful when using Google QuickSearBar or Quicksilver.

Unknown said...

My point was that you shouldn't have to do this. Eclipse should work like other Mac apps and handle multiple workspaces.

Eric Rizzo said...

@Prakash: right, indeed; that's even simpler! I never noticed that alias file before.

@Doug: like what other Mac apps?

Anonymous said...

Right click on eclipse.app and create a duplicate. use the duplicate eclipse.app to open the other workspace.