I've spent hours upon hours trying to resolve the Java on OS X issue detailed here: Arduino application will not run OSX - Installation & Troubleshooting - Arduino Forum and here: Arduino application will not run OSX - Installation & Troubleshooting - Arduino Forum, to no avail.
I refuse to believe that Arduino forum users are not helpful or that there are no Java/OS X experts here. I firmly believe the issue relates to the poor MB layout and lack of 'sticky' (sub-)subjects. In other words, there must be a way to better organize this forum. Some sticky sub-topics could drastically decrease the time reading information that does not help specific situations. How about a "$OS - related" sub-stickies for OS X, Widows, Linux, etc? How about adding another layer of 'category' organization, so that we can make the forum experience a more pleasant and, most importantly, more efficient one?
The java error seen in those threads mentions "java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: javax/swing/filechooser/FileNameExtensionFilter". I experienced this as well when attempting to upgrade from Arduino 1.0.4 to 1.0.5 on my (old) Mac OS X system: 1.0.5 would not launch, dying immediately with that same error.
I determined that the version of Java on my system did not have an implementation of FileNameExtensionFilter, and my system is too old to support a more recent version of Java. However, the code for FileNameExtensionFilter is available at http://grepcode.com, so I compiled it and added it to java's classes.jar, which solved the problem.
Thanks Kelvin. I tried that, but still no joy. I even downloaded a fresh image of Java install from the Apple website and reinstalled, but the problem persists.
I see (from the crash log that you attached in the other thread) that you have a different problem than the FileNameExtensionFilter one reported by fetalharpoon. I’m not sure what’s going on in your case, but I do note that the crashing Thread 4 is using libjvmlinkage.dylib, libjava.jnilib, and libjvm.dylib. From the memory map, libjvmlinkage.dylib appears to be version 1.6.0, while the other two libraries appear to be version 1.5.0.
I don’t know if this is kosher or indicates some misconfiguration in your java install, and I probably can’t be of much help in that area; but I’d like to see what you get if you launch the Terminal and do “ls -l /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions”.
Your problem looks similar to the report at http://code.google.com/p/arduino/issues/detail?id=390, where the suggested workaround is to delve into your Arduino.app, edit the file Arduino.app/Contents/Info.plist, and change:
<key>JVMVersion</key>
<string>1.5*</string>
to
<key>JVMVersion</key>
<string>1.6*</string>
As for your library versions, there must be one or more symlinks along the path /System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.5.0/Contents/Home/bundle/Libraries/libjvm.dylib, so it’s not clear what version you are actually getting. If the workaround doesn’t fix your problem, it might be worth finding the symlink(s). Looks like the other two libraries are 1.6.0.
You're very generous, but no need for a reward beyond the mutual help we all give around here. I've gotten lots of good info on this forum and am happy to have the opportunity to give back.
You can just use TextEdit, or any other application that edits text files.
Control-click (or right-click) on the Arduino application, and in the pop-up menu that results, select "Show Package Contents". Open the Contents folder and you should see Info.plist therein.
