java - Missing tools.jar in local repository breaks m2eclipse

Question

The problem I'm experiencing is that eclipse can't resolve any of the dependencies of my project. This causes problems because even though the dependencies seem to work alright when coding (I get autocompletion) I still get a huge list of errors referring to missing artifacts.

When filtering these, I found the following:

The container 'Maven Dependencies' references non existing library '/home/[...]/.m2/repository/com/sun/tools/1.5.0/tools-1.5.0.jar'

It seems that this dependency was introduced by struts2, who have a profile set up as follows in their pom:

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.sun</groupId>
    <artifactId>tools</artifactId>
    <version>1.5.0</version>
    <scope>system</scope>
    <systemPath>${java.home}/../lib/tools.jar</systemPath>
</dependency>

That systemPath resolves and so I don't see a reason why this would be causing trouble. In any case, is there a way to tell eclipse that this m2eclipse dependency is a system dependency that is not found in the local repository?

Answer 1

I was facing the same problem and needed to do the following things

• Added -vm path/to/jdk/bin in eclipse.ini file
• Clean the existing workspace and reload the project.

It worked for me seamlessly.

Its worth to add that, in my eclipse.ini file I had to add the -vm ... lines at the top of the file. like

-vm
C:Program FilesJavajdk1.6.0_27in
... ... ...

Make sure that, -vm option is placed before -vmargs as everything after -vmargs is passed directely to vm and selecting a particular is depend on -vm option.