Does Eclipse work on a Mac?

At this time, the Eclipse client application are not supported natively on the Apple Mac OS X operating system, however, you may still use Eterm or Solar through one of the various workarounds mentioned below:

The only supported methods of running Solar or Eterm on a Mac:

  • Virtualization: software packages such as Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion are designed to run a Windows workstation inside a virtual “container” on your Mac. Because the virtual environment creates a fully functional Windows workstation, all of the standard Eclipse software is compatible.
  • Remote desktop: tools such as Microsoft Remote Desktop (download) or VNC allow Mac users to remotely access existing Windows workstations or servers. Because the remote environment is a fully-functional Windows workstation, all of the standard Eclipse software is compatible.

Some customers report success using the following unsupported method:

  • Native Solar: because Solar is a Java-based application, it can be installed and launched on a Mac directly from your Eclipse server. It is important to note, however, that many functions that are designed to interact with other Windows software packages (Signature Capture, Close Counter Order, Document Indexer, Manifest Processor, etc.) will not function.
If you encounter an issue with the Eclipse software on a Mac, please reproduce the issue on a Windows workstation (a virtual or remote Windows environment is also acceptable) before opening a support request. Unfortunately, we are not able to provide support for Mac virtualization software or remote desktop tools, or with hardware connectivity issues (e.g. passing through a USB card reader to the virtual desktop), but we will support the Eclipse clients running within the virtual or remote Windows environment.