"Error while loading manipulator"

Question

I'm continually getting the following error under Eclipse Galileo while trying to install the WTP Web Page Editor plugin:

java.lang.IllegalStateException: Error while loading manipulator.
at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.p2.touchpoint.eclipse.LazyManipulator.loadDelegate(LazyManipulator.java:54)
at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.p2.touchpoint.eclipse.LazyManipulator.getConfigData(LazyManipulator.java:108)
at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.p2.touchpoint.eclipse.actions.InstallBundleAction.installBundle(InstallBundleAction.java:76)
at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.p2.touchpoint.eclipse.actions.InstallBundleAction.execute(InstallBundleAction.java:29)
at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.p2.engine.ParameterizedProvisioningAction.execute(ParameterizedProvisioningAction.java:35)
at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.provisional.p2.engine.Phase.mainPerform(Phase.java:129)
at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.provisional.p2.engine.Phase.perform(Phase.java:72)
at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.provisional.p2.engine.PhaseSet.perform(PhaseSet.java:44)
at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.provisional.p2.engine.Engine.perform(Engine.java:54)
at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.provisional.p2.ui.operations.ProvisioningUtil.performProvisioningPlan(ProvisioningUtil.java:389)
at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.provisional.p2.ui.operations.ProfileModificationOperation.doExecute(ProfileModificationOperation.java:61)
at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.provisional.p2.ui.operations.ProvisioningOperation.execute(ProvisioningOperation.java:37)
at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.provisional.p2.ui.ProvisioningOperationRunner$1.run(ProvisioningOperationRunner.java:94)
at org.eclipse.core.internal.jobs.Worker.run(Worker.java:55)

One blog said Eclipse Galileo doesn't play well with Java 1.6 (what??), so I've tried running Eclipse with Java 1.5 but that hasn't helped. Has anyone else had this problem and been able to get around it?

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Edit BTW, below the error in the error log it also says

session context was:(profile=epp.package.java, phase=org.eclipse.equinox.internal.provisional.p2.engine.phases.Install, operand=null --> [R]javax.mail 1.4.0.v200905040518, action=org.eclipse.equinox.internal.p2.touchpoint.eclipse.actions.InstallBundleAction).

Answer 1

You can try to follow the various suggestions mentioned in the bug 277242

Also check your eclipse.ini:

More generally, the error you're seeing can happen when we cannot read "-startup" since we use this to position the install.area.

As suggested by Jelle van Geuns in the comments (and confirmed by Halfstop):

I found that one MacOS there are two folders (MacOS and Eclipse) with two separate sets of configuration files.
Each had an 'org.eclipse.equinox.launcher' startup jar in the plugins sub-folder, but with slightly different versions.

The Eclipse executable resides in the MacOS folder.
But the eclipse.ini there was set up to look for the startup jar under Eclipse/plugins, but with the wrong version.

Solution that worked for me was to copy both versions of the startup.jar to both the plugins sub-folders.

Halfstop confirms:

I copied all of the what was in Eclipse to the MacOS directory and this solved it.

Answer 2

I just ran into this problem today. The answer provided by VonC et al helped to locate the problem but didn't quite fix it.

In my case, the location specified in -startup within the MacOS/eclipse.ini was incorrectly looking in the ../Eclipse/plugins folder rather than the ../MacOS/plugins folder.

I corrected the path and the error went away.