Can't Install netbeans on Mac OS 10.7

Question

Just got a brand new mac.

However when I try to install netbeans 7.0.1, I get to the part of the installation where it wants me to select a destination to install. But it says "Netbeans 7.0.1 cannot be installed on this disk. This software can be installed and work only with Java 6."

I have installed the new 10.7 JDK from apples developer website here:

http://connect.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/MemberSite.woa/wo/5.1.17.2.1.3.3.1.0.1.1.0.3.10.3.3.1

But I am still getting the message.

What am I missing here.

Answer 1

I had the same problem. Worse, I could not install the system JVM after installing the developer preview. After some digging, it seems the developer preview creates a broken symbolic link to CurrentJDK. To fix:

cd /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions
rm CurrentJDK
sudo ln -s /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0_27-b07-395.jdk/Contents/Home CurrentJDK

This is partially the Netbeans installer's fault as well. It hasn't been updated yet to the newer JDK path style that Apple introduced a while ago (/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines).

Answer 2

Forgot to install java developer tools. The Java Developer Tools are available from the Apple developer downloads site, or Oracle.

OSX lion does not come with java developer toolkit pre-installed.

Answer 3

Tnx allot @jsravn for your solution . Still i wanted to add more info because I'm still on Snow leopard (latest is 10.6.8) but encountered this same problem.

Although Netbeans uses the default installer, their installation uses unpack200 a Java Command. This was causing the fatal error. I found this when looking at /var/log/install.log:

   [truncated]
   /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.6/Home/bin/unpack200: No such file or directory 

The Solution is to symlink CurrentJDK to the newer JDK. (similar to @jsravn)

cd /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions
mv CurrentJDK CurrentJDK_old
sudo ln -s /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0_27-b07-395.jdk/Contents CurrentJDK

But as you can read the error log the symlink should end in Contents

I believe this is introduced by the "Java 6 update" by Apple software updates. target versions are Mac OSX 10.6.* or greater

Note that it is odd that Apple did not update the symlink themselves. It may be wise to restore the CurrentJDK symlink afterwards.

Answer 4

There are related posts on that subject in StackOverflow and, as I'm facing the same issue, I guess that Netbeans is not finding JDK on your system (as well as on mine...)

As mentioned by many people JDK is no more part of OS X Lion, but has to be installed and there are 2 versions: one from developer site and one that is uploaded by "Mac update" when needed.

I had no trouble using Netbeans with the second one as it does not install in the same directories.