I’ve run into this problem twice in the last couple of days while downloading and installing new versions of Eclipse and trying out different packages for PHP editing (PDT and Aptana Studio). First time I googled around I couldn’t find a solution and so had to figure it out myself. Second time I thought that maybe I should make a note of my solution as other people might run into it as well.
The problem shows itself with the following error message:
Incompatible profile file name. Expected format is {timestamp}.profile but was ._1248736262197.profile.
This happens when trying to install a new plugin through the “Check for updates” or “Install New Software” dialog. The problem is because of the hidden ._* files which are created by OS X inside the Eclipse directory. The solution is pretty easy – open up a terminal and:
find . -iname '._*' -exec rm -rf {} \;
WARNING – running commands like this on your computer can cause problems. I have run exactly the command above on my machine with no problem but if you manage to break your computer following the above instructions then I take no responsibility! That said, as long as you correctly cd into the Eclipse directory and type/ copy the command correctly then nothing should go wrong!
Hope that helps someone else who runs into the problem!
10 Comments, Comment or Ping
Thanks that really helped out
August 14th, 2009
Hey....... I was really great. Thank you so much!
August 14th, 2009
Good job. This was bugging the crap out of me.
September 17th, 2009
Thank you very very much. This was driving me crazy, but your solution worked first time - and I did not break my computer.
November 23rd, 2009
Thanks, it worked for me.
December 31st, 2009
Thanks it worked perfectly :D
January 12th, 2010
Thank you much!
BTW, the same solution applies when you Eclipse finds ._.java files in the source tree and reports syntax errors in those. These files appear sometimes when downloading project source from the web.
(Of course, in the latter case the command is applied to the project folder, not the eclipse installation folder.)
January 15th, 2010
Thanks alot! Just ran into this problem at work, and this solved it right up for me.
January 27th, 2010
Thanx buddy, This is worked for me.
February 12th, 2010
Thanks! Worked like a charm.
March 2nd, 2010
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