Installation

Also see the Installation FAQ

To install Mylyn, you need to

After you have installed Mylyn, there are a few more configuration steps that you might wish to do:

Project Structure

The Mylyn project is structured into the following update sites and distributions. Mylyn extensions are split into two different categories. Connectors extend Mylyn to different task management systems. Bridges focus the artifacts that you work with when you active a task.

Main

The main Mylyn update site features are mature components that are supported by the Mylyn project committers and distributed as part of the Eclipse Downloads.

Features:

Integration:

Extras

Mature components that are supported by community contributions. You must add the Extras site in order to install these components.

Integration:

Incubator

Incubator components vary in maturity level and are supported by the component leads.

Features:

Integration:

Releases

The best and most stable release to use is always the latest. This goes for milestone releases (e.g. 2.0M1) which will often have bug fixes and other improvements over final release versions (e.g. 1.0.1). The "milestone" tag only refers to the fact that the API for that release is still stabilizing. Our policy is not to destabilize, so any Mylyn build that you install should be stable, including development builds. The UI of development builds can fluctuate.

Schedule

Weekly/Integration Builds

Integration builds are released weekly and should be used by all Mylyn contributors not self-hosting from CVS straight from CVS.

Task List and Context Store Compatibility

The Task List and Context Store are compatible across all currently-supported Eclipse versions. This means that you can use the same .mylyn data in both Eclipse 3.2 and 3.3. For Mylyn versions that have reached their end-of-life we specify the update path so that the contents of the .mylyn folder are updated. This is listed in the "Update notes" on top of the New & Noteworthy.

Task context compatibility

Task contexts can be shared with any previous released version of Mylyn. Note that if elements have been renamed they may not appear as interesting when the context is activated.

Download

For supported platforms and known limitations please see the Mylyn download page.

The recommended way to install Mylyn is from inside Eclipse:

  1. Select Help->Software Updates->Find and Install.
  2. Select Search for new features to install and select Next.
  3. Select New Remote Site.
  4. Enter "Mylyn" for the name and insert the download site given on the Mylyn downloads page. The URL should end up as something similar to http://download.eclipse.org/tools/mylyn/update/eX.Y. where X.Y is the Eclipse release number.
    1. Eclipse 3.2: http://download.eclipse.org/tools/mylyn/update/e3.2
    2. Eclipse 3.3: http://download.eclipse.org/tools/mylyn/update/e3.3
    3. Eclipse 3.4: http://download.eclipse.org/tools/mylyn/update/e3.4 (probably)
  5. Select OK.
  6. Make sure there is a check in the Mylyn box, and select Finish.
  7. Put a check in the box next to Mylyn. If you don't mind downloading some stuff you don't need, go ahead and select Next. Otherwise, expand the Mylyn line (by clicking on the disclosure triangle) and select what you want. We recommend downloading the Task List, the Focused UI, and connectors appropriate to the bug repository that you use -- Bugzilla, Trac, or Jira. (Note that to download Jira, you need both the core and the connector.) You can download Mylyn without a bug repository, but it won't be as interesting an experience. If you download the Focused UI you will want to also choose the Bridge appropraite to the content you work with. Most developers will want to include all bridges provided.
  8. Read the license agreements, accept or decline as appropriate, and either select Next (if you accept) or Cancel (if you do not accept).
  9. You will see a list of features and where to install them. If the default installation directory is fine, select Finish.

Optional Extras There are optional Mylyn extras available at a separate update site: http://download.eclipse.org/tools/mylyn/update/extras. This update site includes projects still in incubation. As of writing this update site includes the JIRA Connector, the Generic Issue Tracker Connector, and UI Usage Reporting facility.

Errors you might get during the download process:

Platform requirements

Mylyn requires the Java 5 virtual machine. To check the version of the Java virtual machine that Eclipse was launched with to to Help -> About Eclipse SDK -> Configuration Details and verify that the java.vm.version is 1.5.

Mac users should refer to the last comment on bug 1163477 for instructions on how to change the 1.4 default.

We do not recommend using JDK 1.6 on Eclipse 3.1. (It works fine with Eclipse 3.2 or 3.3.) To use JDK 1.6 on Eclipse 3.1, you must add the following line to your config.ini file:

   org.osgi.framework.executionenvironment=OSGi/Minimum-1.0,OSGi/Minimum-1.1,JRE-1.1,J2SE-1.2,
   J2SE-1.3,J2SE-1.4,J2SE-1.5,JavaSE-1.6

Linux and JVM issues

For those experiencing unstable performance with Linux using the Sun JVM, download the IBM JVM, which will require you to register with IBM prior to download.

In Unix, set the environment variable JAVA_HOME to the root of the JDK1.5 installation and/or set the PATH variable to put the JDK1.5 executable directory before any other VM executable directories. For example, under bash in Unix:

export JAVA_HOME="''(location of JDK1.5 root)''"
export PATH=$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH

Installing on Linux

Browser issues

Mylyn uses the Standard Widget Toolkit Browser, and users have experienced problems with the SWT Browser on Linux. This is not a Mylyn specific problem and also occurrs if you try to use Eclipse's Browser view. There are two options:

When the Browser is not properly configured exceptions such such as "Could not create Browser page: No more handles (java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: ...)" will appear when attempting to open tasks. See the SWT Browser guide for which browsers will work.

Seamonkey is reported to work well. Just install and then point MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME to /usr/lib/seamonkey. (read below for example of setting this variable)

To test to see if your browser is properly configured, select Window -> Show View -> Other -> General -> Internal Web Browser, then try to bring up a web page.

Mylyn Task Management features makes use of Eclipse's internal browser, which may require additional install steps listed below. You also have the option of disabling Mylyn's use of the internal browser via Preferences -> Mylyn -> Tasks.

The following steps have been verified on Fedora Core 5, and OpenSuSE 10.1.

  1. Run Mozilla (not Firefox) to confirm that it works.
  2. Confirm the location of your Mozilla install (ex: /usr/lib/mozilla-1.7.12)
  3. Set necessary environment variables in <home_directory>/.bashrc, adding the following 3 lines
    MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME=/usr/lib/mozilla-1.7.12
    LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:$MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME
    export MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME LD_LIBRARY_PATH

For Debian Etch and newer use the following MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME:

    MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME=/usr/lib/iceape
4. Log out and log in again (or type "source .bashrc" at the prompt)
5. Start Eclipse and test the internal web browser

If you are getting exceptions indicating missing libraries, check that the paths are accurate and that you have the libraries required. For example, on our test box a library was still missing after these steps. The libstdc++.so.5 was being reported as missing. To solve this problem, find an rpm online that will install the missing legacy library. In our case we found necessary rpm (compat-libstdc++-33-3.2.3-47.fc4.i386.rpm) on rpmfind.net using their search facility. See also: Standard Widget Toolkit FAQ

Memory consumption problem with internal browser on Linux-GTK

If you are experiencing abnormal memory consumption upon launching the internal browser (or opening repository tasks), try shutting down eclipse, renaming/moving your ~/.mozilla/eclipse folder and relaunching eclipse. (see bug#172782)

No more handles error

(java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: no swt-mozilla-gtk-3449 or swt-mozilla-gtk in swt.library.path, java.library.path or the jar file)

To resolve this error install a package that provides the Gecko engine library. On Ubuntu and Debian the package is called libxul0d.

The recommended GTK theme to use for KDE (and KDE based distributions like Kubuntu) is the "Human" theme. (Possibly, this is also a good recommendation for GNOME. GNOME users, please comment.)

With Debian based distributions (e.g. Ubuntu), this theme can be installed with

 aptitude install human-theme

The appearance of GTK applications is controlled by the KDE System Settings / Control Center in the section "Appearance".

GTK Styles and Fonts: GTK Styles: Select "Use another style Human"
Colors: At bottom: x Apply colors to non-KDE applications

These changes are applied to these two GTK configuration files, respectively:

Solving issues with KDE environment variable settings

Most of the known UI issues below are due to a broken environment variable setting. The environment variable GTK2_RC_FILES contains a search path to find the GTK configuration files to be used by the GTK application and can be checked with

 env | grep GTK2_RC_FILES

The correct setting is obtained by

 export GTK2_RC_FILES=$HOME/.gtkrc-2.0-kde:$HOME/.kde/share/config/gtkrc-2.0 ''# Bourne shell''
 setenv GTK2_RC_FILES $HOME/.gtkrc-2.0-kde:$HOME/.kde/share/config/gtkrc-2.0 ''# C shell''

Important note: The used environment setting seems to differ depending on the way KDE starts the application: from Konsole, using "Run Command...", using a desktop icon etc. Please use this simple script to check the different ways:

 #!/bin/bash
 env | grep GTK2_RC_FILES >/tmp/GTK2_RC_FILES.env

and look at the resulting output in /tmp.

Consider filing a bug against the distribution showing this inconsistent behaviour.

Known UI issues with KDE

There a couple of bugs related to UI features not working in specific Linux distributions:

Debian 3.1 (sarge) with KDE and standard X11 installation (XFree86) works fine for all three issues.

Debian testing (etch) with KDE and new X11 installation (X.Org) has issues with the color display (bug 176716 and 135928), but the Task Activate button works.

Kubuntu Dapper 6.06 with KDE and X.Org triggers all above issues. An upgrade to Edgy enables Task Color display and the date picker selection. To get the Task Activation button working you have to use Edgy and Eclipse 3.3M5eh (or newer).

Kubuntu Gutsy 7.10 has issues with the color display (bug 176716). A workaround is to change the GTK-Style to "Human". More details and another solution in the comments of bug 176716.

Installing on MacOS

If you see errors like the following it may be due to Xerces missing from the Mac JDK so you may need to add it to your default classpath. Please refer to and comment on bug 144287 if you see this problem.

   Could not create Bugzilla editor input
   java.io.IOException: SAX2 driver class org.apache.xerces.parsers.SAXParser not found

To ensure that you are using the 1.5 VM refer to the last comment on bug 1163477 for instructions on how to change the 1.4 default.