Posted on by Leo Ufimtsev Eclipse, gtk

How to tell if you are running Eclipse on Gtk2 or on Gtk3

When troubleshooting Eclipse bugs, I sometimes ask if you are running eclipse on gtk2 or gtk3.

Usually I can tell visually if Eclipse is running on Gtk2 or Gtk3, but this changes depending on your system theme.

In the about section

As Alexander Kurtakov pointed out and described in Lar’s article ,

Help -> About -> Installation Details -> Configuration Tab.

Look for something like:
org.eclipse.swt.internal.gtk.version=3.14.12

It’s usually somewhere near line 84 ish. But you can copy the text and search for it in your text editor.

Note, if this line is missing altogether, you’re (very most likely) running Eclipse on Gtk2.

See what version is on your system

You can find out which version of gtk is installed on your system by running pkg-config (you might need to install it first). This gives you an indication of which version of gtk eclipse might be using.

pkg-config --modversion gtk+-3.0

Force Eclipse to use either gtk2 / gtk3

You can force Eclipse to use a certain version of gtk:

#Gtk3 forced:
export SWT_GTK3=1
eclipse

#Gtk2 forced:
export SWT_GTK3=0
eclipse

Under gtk3, the entry in the about section should be present like: org.eclipse.swt.internal.gtk.version=3.14.12

 

[edit 2016-09Sep-08Thu]
This is actually by far the most visited blog entry on my blog (20k+ views)
I reference this page quite often, I made a short/memorable url for it: http://bit.ly/gtk2orgtk3

21 thoughts on “How to tell if you are running Eclipse on Gtk2 or on Gtk3”

  2. Hello,

    Not sure :-), on Fedora it comes pre-installed as far as I can tell, or it somehow made it onto my system anyhows.
    I think it’s only available with gtk 3.14.
    To find out your gtk version, type:
    pkg-config –modversion gtk+-3.0

    If it’s a key-binding problem, try typing this into terminal:
    export GTK_DEBUG=interactive

    Then run eclipse. The GtK-Inspector should pop up. If not, maybe you’re using gre 3.14? (how does eclipse look like, does it have + or > on the package explorer?)

    I’ll update article in a minute.

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  3. The suggest way does not work for me on Ubuntu, I used:

    dpkg -l libgtk2.0-0 libgtk-3-0

    And got the output
    ii libgtk-3-0:amd 3.10.8-0ubun amd64 GTK+ graphical user interface lib
    ii libgtk2.0-0:am 2.24.23-0ubu amd64 GTK+ graphical user interface lib

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  5. In cases where both GTK+2 or GTK+3 cause Eclipse to crash (Eclipse 4.2.2) … does this indicate that GTK package is corrupt(?) and needs to be reinstalled on Linux? Perhaps there is a safer alternative to using GTK+2 or GTK+3? Can you recommend same?

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    • Well, somewhat unlikley. If you can run other applications but eclipse crashes, it probably means there is an issue with eclipse. It depends on many factors. Try using the eclipse that came with your linux distribution as oppose to downloading form the website, e.g the fedora-eclipse is pretty stable.

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  6. Another way to force Eclipse to use GTK 2 is to add the following two lines to the file eclipse.ini:
    –launcher.GTK_version
    2

    The file eclipse.ini is in the same directory as the Eclipse executable, if you downloaded it from the eclipse.org site.

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    • Correction: instead of the en dash — there should be two minus signs. WordPress unfortunately automatically replaces them with an en dash and I don’t know how to overcome it.

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    • Thank you very much. This seems to be the standart way to define which GTK version to use. Plus, I got rid of the huge toolbar and tabs that my eclipse setup had (because of it using 3.x by default).

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  8. Hello there,
    I am using Debian Jessie 8.3 with XFCE. In eclipse Mars I have black tooltip background and I think I tried everything. I tried to add export SWT_GTK3=0 in ~./profile as well as the solution Jaan suggested. In the end of the eclipse ini file I added:
    –launcher.GTK–version
    2

    But that also didnt help at all. I am pretty desperate right now, I would apreciate all help really.

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    • Try to download a newer version of eclipse, maybe even the beta builds:
      http://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/downloads/

      Eric did some work on the GdkColors some time ago:
      https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=477950

      If that doesn’t help, I would recommend to try a different desktop interface if possible (e.g MATE), to see if that makes a difference. Maybe try a brighter background theme.
      If all else fails, try Gnome3 with standard theme. Things work ok on that afaik. (it’s a bit memory heavy, I know 🙂 )

      I’m in my last semester at university atm, not full-time at Eclipse. (will return in April). In the mean time, I would reccomend you post something to Eric Williams:
      https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=477950

      He’s currently working on the GdkColor business that affects the tooltip. He’s probably looking for some testers =).

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      • Thank you for your answer,
        I have downloaded eclipse just last week so its pretty fresh, i think there were no updates since then.
        As for the gui, I rather not change it. I find it really best of all so far :p.
        I have found a solution that nearly fixed this: https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=439884

        Now my tooltip is white, but hovered text aswell so ita unreadable. Im not sure what to do actually. As for the beta versions i rather not install any cutting edge software, but i would of course if thats to work this out.

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  9. You saved my life, I’m GTK+2 fan (almost slave :), and I need Eclipse to my job, I was stuck on this horrible problem and not anymore! Thank you!

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    • Glad to hear.

      There is a lot of active work going on right now to get HiDpi working well. For example icon scaling has been implemented. More recent nightly versions of Eclipse would work better with HiDpi.

      As a note, there are plans on phasing out support for Gtk2 in 2-4 years and start migrating to Gtk4.

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