Compiz, Java and the SWT_AWT bridge
Posted on July 2nd, 2008 at 14:38
Ubuntu includes Compiz which provides fancy desktop effects. Unfortunately it does not play very well with Java. After enabling Compiz, I have seen seen numerous empty Swing dialogs in soapUI . This is a known problem in Java. The bug report claims it is fixed in 1.6.0_10 but the Ubunu repositories still have Java 1.6.0_06.
There is a workaround to prevent the empty dialogs. Add the following line to your .profile file:
export AWT_TOOLKIT="MToolkit"
Today I tried to install the Eclipse plug-in of soapUI and I discovered that the workaround breaks the SWT_AWT bridge in Eclipse. Bug 208968 mentions a workaround but it requires a code change so I'm stuck.
I guess I'll open a soapUI bug and continue to use the Swing version instead of the Eclipse plug-in (which is a repackaged Swing version anyway). If you were able to get the Eclipse plug-in of soapUI working in Ubuntu with desktop effects, let me know.
If you use the -vm option, and point your eclipse installation to a Java 1.5 sun jdk you can run SOAP UI fine within eclipse. The issue has to do with the 1.6 runtime. You could also try running JRockit or IBM's 1.6 jdks and see if they experience the same problems as the sun version. But I know that the 1.5 jdk works with soap ui on Ubuntu.
Ah! Interesting... but I'm not sure I want to sacrifice Java 1.6's improved performance. Choices, choices,...
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