It is definitely something that I did, but I cannot determine what. I had jEdit 4.2 final working with jdk1.5.0 on a Windows 2000SP4 machine (IBM T30). I updated to jdk1.5.0_01 and jEdit was still working (meaning that it launched and everything worked fine, plugins included).

I did some work on my cygwin environment (installs, updates, etc) and then when I tried to launch jEdit, nothing happened.

Now when I say "nothing happened," I mean just that. Instead of using "javaw.exe", I tried launching from the command line, like:

C:\jedit42>java -version
java version "1.4.2_06"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.4.2_06-b03)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.4.2_06-b03, mixed mode)

C:\jedit42>java -verbose -jar jedit.jar

[whole lotta output omitted]

[Loaded org.gjt.sp.jedit.io.VFSManager]
[Loaded org.gjt.sp.jedit.JARClassLoader]
[Loaded org.gjt.sp.jedit.io.VFS]
[Loaded org.gjt.sp.jedit.io.FileVFS]
[Loaded org.gjt.sp.jedit.io.UrlVFS]
[Loaded gnu.regexp.REException]
[Loaded org.gjt.sp.jedit.io.VFS$DirectoryEntry]
[Loaded org.gjt.sp.jedit.io.FileVFS$LocalDirectoryEntry]
[Loaded org.gjt.sp.jedit.io.VFS$1]
[Loaded org.gjt.sp.jedit.EditBus]
[Loaded org.gjt.sp.util.Log]
[Loaded org.gjt.sp.util.Log$1]
[Loaded javax.swing.ListModel from C:\Program Files\Java\j2re1.4.2_06\lib\rt.jar]
[Loaded org.gjt.sp.util.Log$LogListModel]

[more output omitted]

and I saw everything load, no error messages, and then nothing more.

I have completely uninstalled/re-installed jEdit and my java environment, and now I am at java 1.4.2_06, but the same problem exists. And all throughout this, I can launch any other jar file, such as batik.jar or the jedit java installer. So it looks like this is something specific to jedit.jar (and I have a couple of different versions, all of which have the same behavior).

This isn't a bug, because it was working just fine before something in the environment changed. I'm stumped. Any clues or hints about this?