Newly setup Dbeaver eclipse project has errors due to unresolved dependencies and plugin

[samuele555]

I tryied several times to setup a development workspace, following the wiki step-by-step on a newly downloaded eclipse instance (RCP edition), without modifying the source code, after updating maven project and restarting ide (as stated in the wiki). But still the project is broken:

with various errors
"Attribute 'name' of element 'separator' must be defined." in /org.jkiss.dbeaver.core/plugin.xml
or
"Bundle 'com.dbeaver.jdbc.driver.libsql' cannot be resolved" in /org.jkiss.dbeaver.ui.swt.linux/src/org/eclipse/swt/browser/DBeaverBrowserHelper.java
or
"Element 'license' must not have empty content" in /org.jkiss.dbeaver.app.base.feature/feature.xml

Now, i appreciate that there's a curated wiki article about setting up the project, but it may need some updates, and some more cleaner step description, also about running the debugger, because the presented hierarchy my be outdated:

(Such .launch file is not present, must be "copied" from DBeaver.product with a different extension, and also it does not appear as a debug configuration in eclipse view)

Thanks in advance for your help.

[xsyz-eng]

Hello, have you solved the problem? I am a computer novice. I encountered the same problem as you. After trying for 7 hours, my Eclipse can load source code files normally, but I don't know how to start the project. How did you solve it? Thank you for your answer

[samuele555]

I did not resolved it yet. I managed to run it, by creating a project through IntelliJidea IDE. It's way more automated process and you get a runnable project out-of-the-box (almost). I wanted to configure Eclipse project, because it's an eclipse native project, it uses the same framework/architecture but no matter how hard i tryied, following the wiki article down to every detail i always get a broken project.

[chirontt]

Yes, the dbeaver project has a lot of errors when importing it to the Eclipse PDE. I guess the project's team members no longer use the Eclipse PDE for development, so they have "abandoned" the support for that Eclipse IDE. The wiki documents about Eclipse have been outdated for a long time, but no-one has complained ... until now. Maybe it's now up to the "community" to support it.

I have some fixes for the errors when importing to Eclipse PDE, in my fork, especially the changes isolated in my fix_eclipse_pde_errors branch; here are the diffs for the branch: devel...chirontt:dbeaver:fix_eclipse_pde_errors

[ged-yuko]

Yeah, these are such an errors that i personally don't even consider to complain about them. It takes like 15 minutes to make it buildable as soon as all the glitchy tycho-related stuff is getting resolved. I mostly stumble across tycho plugins failing to integrate with eclipse itself (during Import Maven project steps), which is not a codebase-related thing and to me solved by a number of remove-project-and-import-again iterations. Then it works like a charm.

Its also shame to the IDEA for its dependency management in conjunction with maven plugins (tycho), which it just ignores and forces you to duplicate all the build configuration, while also dropping manifests validation (which tycho does!) while validating plugin.xmls nonetheless. Shame on the JetBrains. I just fail to see how they can claim IDEA having Maven itegration while not having maven plugins lifecycle correctly supported (exposed by tycho not working with manifest dependencies properly in IDEA and thus ruining all the workflow).

[chirontt]

About the "glitchy tycho-related stuff", I think I know where the problems lie in the wiki document:

• the lifecycle mapping metadata crap (Steps 8-9); this thing hasn't been needed for years in the Eclipse RCP, this info should be deleted from the document
• installing an old/outdated Maven plugin connector (Steps 13-14); this is wrong, i.e. no need for any extra "plugin connectors" in the modern Eclipse RCP, so this info should be deleted from the document. More elaborations below.

During the import of the dbeaver project, Eclipse would pop up a Setup Maven plugin connectors dialog like this (I'm using Eclipse RCP 2025-12 release):

The emphasis here is not to install any more of those outdated "plugin connectors" in the list, because doing so would require the above-mentioned "lifecycle mapping metadata" crap and leading to conflicts with existing connectors in the IDE, so the developer should just click "Resolve All Later" and then "Finish" buttons, to dismiss the dialog without installing anything.

Then the importing would be completed, but with a scary-looking Maven error like:

on the jdbc-libsql project (which was imported automatically by the dbeaver import):

In that case, Right-click --> Run As --> 4 Maven install on the jdbc-libsql project will force a manual rebuild of the project which will resolve the error.

Plus, the section Running and Debugging in Eclipse in the wiki document should be re-written with the information below.

[chirontt]

For the missing "launch configuration files", they are no longer included in the project. But here's @ged-yuko's comment on how to create them yourself in your Eclipse workspace.