Why are the C++ perspective and new project options not available in Eclipse?

Question

I installed the "Eclipse IDE for Java Developers" package from the Eclipse website. I work with C++ projects as well, so I used the "Install New Software..." menu option to install the "C/C++ Development Tools" package. After doing so and restarting Eclipse, the C++ perspective did not appear; clicking on the "Open Perspective" button did not show the "C/C++" option. I also found that I was unable to create a C++ project; the "C/C++" tree node did not appear in the New Project wizard. The Java perspective and new project options were available.

I verified that CDT was installed by going to the "Installed Installation Details" dialog - "C/C++ Development Tools" appeared in the "Installed Software" list. I tried uninstalling this package and reinstalled it again without success. I tried removing the Eclipse installation altogether and installing the "Eclipse IDE for C/C++ Developers". There were no C/C++ options in this installation either. I checked the .log file in the workspace directory and found nothing unusual.

Why are the C/C++ features not available after installing the CDT feature in Eclipse?

Answer 1

The path for this system Eclipse was installed on included a 1.3.1 version of the Java runtime environment and the Eclipse executable was using this version to run Eclipse. Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be any indication of this in Eclipse, nor any indication that anything failed.

Using the instructions here, I changed the JVM to javaw.exe in a Java 7 installation. After doing so, the C/C++ perspective and new project options appeared in Eclipse.

Answer 2

I ran into the similar problem with Eclipse-Luna(4.4) on Yosemite(10.10). - NOT able to get the C/C++ perspective with JRE (8u25) or java 1.6 on Yosemite.

But I manage to get C/C++ perspective with the installation of JDK(8u25).