Installing Aptana Studio 1.2 on Ubuntu 8.10 x86

I’m using Aptana Studio for some PHP/RoR/Python web development and I have Win XP x64 on a Rock xtreme64 D900K but my Sony Vaio TX3 uses Ubuntu (Compiz Fusion is irresistible). To keep the development environments the same I’ve created an Ubuntu guest virtual machine (VM) for PHP work on the Win XP host machine. Aptana is easy to install under Windows but it’s less easy under Linux so it’s worth documenting how this can be done with the current releases.

VirtualBox VM with Windows XP x64 Host and Ubuntu 8.10 Desktop x86 Guest (procedure should work for any Ubuntu 8.10 install).

1. download and unarchive Aptana Studio Standalone for Linux (v.1.2)
2. place the aptana folder under /usr/local/aptana

   sudo mv ./aptana/ /usr/local/

3. install Java v.1.6

   sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jre sun-java6-plugin sun-java6-fonts

4. install xulrunner 1.8.* with the Synaptic Package Manager
5. save the following script as /usr/local/aptana/runAptana.sh

   #!/bin/bash
export MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME=/usr/lib/xulrunner
/usr/local/aptana/AptanaStudio

6. Make your script executable

   chmod +x runAptana.sh

7. download and unarchive the Aptana icons: http://support.aptana.com/asap/secure/attachment/10398/aptana_icons.zip
8. move the aptana_icons folder to under the aptana folder
9. create a desktop and/or panel launcher

   name: Aptana Studio
   command: browse to /usr/local/aptana/runAptana.sh
   icon: use aptana48x48.png for the desktop launcher
   comment: web development

10. click on launcher 🙂

Note: I didn’t need to install Firefox v.2. The current version of FF is 3.0.5.

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