MacOS – Shortcut to Eclipse in /Applications

applicationseclipsemacos

I just downloaded Eclipse for OS X. I managed to run it, but I want to put it directly in /Applications:

I don't want to place the eclipse folder, which has inside it the Eclipse.app, inside /Applications, but I want to place a shortcut to Eclipse.app directly into /Applications (so I can run eclipse with one click, as if it was any other app inside /Applications).

Any ideas how to do so? Tried a symlink but doesn't seem to work.

Best Answer

A symlink won't work as at the command line level an application is a directory.

Make an alias to the Eclipse application in the Finder and drop that into /Applications and it will work fine.

By the way, you will see in the eclipse folder a file eclipse which is a link to the actual Eclipse unix executable that lives in Eclipse.app/Contents/MacOS alongside the eclipse.ini file that defines all the startup options. You might want to replicate that link to somewhere in your PATH so that you can run Eclipse from the command line.

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