Bug#347254: eclipse: fails to locate the JVM when JAVA_HOME is not set

[Jeff Breidenbach]

Package: eclipse
Version: 3.1.1-8
Severity: normal

So I went to run Eclipse on a computer that has just the Sun 1.5 JVM
and got the following:

rode:~> eclipse
searching for compatible vm...
  testing /usr/lib/jvm/java-gcj...not found
  testing /usr/lib/kaffe/pthreads...not found
  testing /usr/lib/j2se/1.5...not found
  testing /usr/lib/j2se/1.4...not found
  testing /usr/lib/j2sdk1.5-ibm...not found
  testing /usr/lib/j2sdk1.4-ibm...not found
  testing /usr/lib/j2sdk1.5-sun...found

[then a dialog box that says "A suitable Java Virtual Machine for
running the Eclipse Platform could not be located."]

Tracing through the /usr/bin/eclipse shell script (and sticking
in some debugging statements), JAVA_HOME is correctly set as of 
line 73, but is then completely empty by line 82. I don't really know
what is going on here, the best I can imagine is there is some
weird scoping rule in shell scripts that I don't know about. 

I do not set the JAVA_HOME environment variable in my shell before
running eclipse. Also, I think this problem is new and introduced
some time within the last few weeks. It has been a while since I've
run eclipse.
 
rode:~> dpkg -l | grep j2s
rc  j2sdk1.4-doc                 1.4.0.99beta-1		Java(TM) 2 SDK, Standard Edition -- Document
rc  j2se-common                  1.1			Common facilities for all Java2 Standard Edi
ii  sun-j2sdk1.4                 1.4.2+07		Java(TM) 2 SDK, Standard Edition, Sun Micros
ii  sun-j2sdk1.4debian           0.18			Debian specific parts of Java(TM) 2 SDK, Sta
ii  sun-j2sdk1.5                 1.5.0+update05		Java(TM) 2 SDK, Standard Edition, Sun Micros


-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.4.27-2-686
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968)

Versions of packages eclipse depends on:
ii  eclipse-jdt                   3.1.1-8    Java Development Tools plug-ins fo
ii  eclipse-pde                   3.1.1-8    Plug-in Development Environment to
ii  eclipse-source                3.1.1-8    Eclipse source code plug-ins

eclipse recommends no packages.

-- no debconf information