Running eclipse based apps on Fedora 9 x86_64

Many IBM applications are based on eclipse for i386 architectures. Just some examples: Lotus Notes, Sametime, Symphony, IES (IBM eclipse SDK). However, the Fedora 9 for x86_64 architectures does not install any 32 bits libraries anymore. How shall these applications now run on Fedora 9?

One one side, these applications were designed for Linux on 32 bit architectures. Therefore, they were build on the 32 bits eclipse framework that relies on several JNI (Java Native Interface) calls to 32 bit libraries. The most important library is the low level access to gtk API.

On the other side, Fedora 9 decided not to provide i368 libraries anymore for x86_64 machines. I think this approach is quite radical, since many applications still rely on i386 libraries. Classic examples are firefox where the absence of i386 libraries breaks flash player and JVM integration.

Those who may argue that eclipse already provides a 64 bit version forget that the mentioned applications are officially supported only for i386, or they were not yet compiled and made available for x86_64. While this does not happen, the user should not be prevented from running their favorite eclipse application.

How to run eclipse on Fedora 9

Note that these steps probably also apply for Lotus Notes, Sametime, Symphony and most other eclipse based applications.

1. Install eclipse as usual (download from www.eclipse.org and un-tar it).
2. Install libcairo, 32 bits version:
   - i.e. yum install libcairo.i386
3. Install libXtst, 32 bit version:
   - i.e. yum install libXtst.i386
4. Depending on your 32 bit jvm, you may need to install additional i386 libraries:
   - yum install *libstdc++*.i386 *libXp*.i386

Of course, yum will also install all dependencies.