Hi I have been running Arduino on my Macbook Pro for some time and recently updated to 10.11.5. Now when I start up the IDE it gets to initializing packages and then craps out. I was running an earlier version so I updated to 1.6.11, updated the FTDI drivers and deleted the sketch folder just in case.
Noting I have tried makes any difference. I have followed threads that seem relevant but they don't address the problem.
What should I try next?
You can run the program arduino-debug from the command line to get more information on the cause of the crash. Please post the output here using code tags(</> button on the toolbar).
Just to verify, did the issue start with a previous version of the Arduino IDE or only after you updated to Arduino IDE 1.6.11? There is an issue I'm aware of that causes this only with Arduino IDE 1.6.11 but not with previous IDE versions.
thanks for the quick response - Sorry to be dim but how to i run the debug?
No everything was working fine on the old IDE then I updated to El Capitan!
In the Arduino IDE installation folder there are two different programs you can use to start the IDE, on Windows they are arduino.exe and arduino_debug.exe, that might be slightly different on Mac. Note that I gave the wrong filename in my previous comment, it's arduino_debug, not arduino-debug. arduino_debug prints out some information while starting(or trying to start) the Arduino IDE but if you run that program normally it only shows the output for a fraction of a second and then closes it when the IDE crashes(at least on Windows, I have no experience on Mac) so you need to run it from the command line so that the window will stay open after the crash so that you can read it and copy and paste it.
I definitely have seen a lot of reports of El Capitan related issues with the IDE.
Ok - so I located the Arduino exe in The package contents of the IDE Arduino/Contents/MacOS and ran that while I had the terminal open. This is what I get:
java.io.IOException: Input/output error
at java.io.FileInputStream.readBytes(Native Method)
at java.io.FileInputStream.read(FileInputStream.java:255)
at sun.nio.cs.StreamDecoder.readBytes(StreamDecoder.java:284)
at sun.nio.cs.StreamDecoder.implRead(StreamDecoder.java:326)
at sun.nio.cs.StreamDecoder.read(StreamDecoder.java:178)
at java.io.InputStreamReader.read(InputStreamReader.java:184)
at java.io.BufferedReader.fill(BufferedReader.java:161)
at java.io.BufferedReader.readLine(BufferedReader.java:324)
at java.io.BufferedReader.readLine(BufferedReader.java:389)
at processing.app.legacy.PApplet.loadStrings(PApplet.java:270)
at processing.app.helpers.PreferencesMap.load(PreferencesMap.java:100)
at processing.app.helpers.PreferencesMap.load(PreferencesMap.java:74)
at processing.app.debug.LegacyTargetPlatform.<init>(LegacyTargetPlatform.java:115)
at cc.arduino.contributions.packages.ContributedTargetPlatform.<init>(ContributedTargetPlatform.java:41)
at cc.arduino.contributions.packages.ContributionsIndexer.createTargetPackages(ContributionsIndexer.java:352)
at processing.app.BaseNoGui.loadContributedHardware(BaseNoGui.java:835)
at processing.app.BaseNoGui.initPackages(BaseNoGui.java:626)
at processing.app.Base.<init>(Base.java:296)
at processing.app.Base.guardedMain(Base.java:223)
at processing.app.Base.main(Base.java:136)
java.lang.NullPointerException
at processing.app.helpers.PreferencesMap.load(PreferencesMap.java:101)
at processing.app.helpers.PreferencesMap.load(PreferencesMap.java:74)
at processing.app.debug.LegacyTargetPlatform.<init>(LegacyTargetPlatform.java:115)
at cc.arduino.contributions.packages.ContributedTargetPlatform.<init>(ContributedTargetPlatform.java:41)
at cc.arduino.contributions.packages.ContributionsIndexer.createTargetPackages(ContributionsIndexer.java:352)
at processing.app.BaseNoGui.loadContributedHardware(BaseNoGui.java:835)
at processing.app.BaseNoGui.initPackages(BaseNoGui.java:626)
at processing.app.Base.<init>(Base.java:296)
at processing.app.Base.guardedMain(Base.java:223)
at processing.app.Base.main(Base.java:136)