Today I could not install any SQL Developer extension on my Mac OS X machine. I did not get an error message during the installation. After a restart of SQL Developer the extension simply was missing. When I tried to re-install it – selecting “Check for updates…” in the “Help” menu – I’ve got the following message:
Restarting SQL Developer did not help. This message was shown again and no extension was installed. I’ve tried to remove the $HOME/.sqldeveloper directory and reinstalled SQL Developer, but the problem persisted. I’ve tried SQL Developer version 4.0.3.16.84 and the brand new version 4.1.0.19.07. Same result.
After some analysis I found the root cause. SQL Developer creates a file named jdeveloper-deferred-updates.txt in the directory $HOME/.sqldeveloper (e.g. /Users/phs/.sqldeveloper). This file is read and copied into a temporary directory as part of the installation process. On non-Windows platforms the name of the temporary directory is $TMPDIR/$USER (e.g. /var/folders/lf/8g3r0ts900gfdfn2xxkn9yz00000gn/T/phs). If a file with such a name already exists, the directory cannot be created and the whole installation of the extension fails.
Open a terminal window (e.g. type terminal in the spotlight window) and execute the following command to delete the existing temporary file, which is causing the name conflict:
1 |
rm $TMPDIR/$USER |
Afterwards restart SQL Developer and install the extension. Restart SQL Developer once again to complete the installation.