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I am using eclipse 3.5 (cocoa build) on Macos 10.5 with Java 1.5.0.19.

I just have 3 java files opened 1 files ~ 2000 lines the other 2 are ~ 700 lines.

But when I switch from 1 file tab to another, eclipse takes a long time (~ 20 seconds) to switch to another tab.

I have already change the eclipse.ini to

more eclipse.ini
-startup
../../../plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher_1.0.200.v20090520.jar
--launcher.library
../../../plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.cocoa.macosx_1.0.0.v20090519
-product
org.eclipse.epp.package.jee.product
-showsplash
org.eclipse.platform
--launcher.XXMaxPermSize
256m
-vmargs
-Dosgi.requiredJavaVersion=1.5
-XstartOnFirstThread
-Dorg.eclipse.swt.internal.carbon.smallFonts
-XX:MaxPermSize=512m
-Xms128m
-Xmx1024m
-Xdock:icon=../Resources/Eclipse.icns
-XstartOnFirstThread
-Dorg.eclipse.swt.internal.carbon.smallFonts

Is there any way to make eclipse 3.5 more speedy?

Thank you.

user219882
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n179911
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14 Answers14

52

I switched this line in the eclipse.ini file (found inside the eclipse application package):

-Dosgi.requiredJavaVersion=1.5

to

-Dosgi.requiredJavaVersion=1.6

and tab switching was speedy again.

Mike Miller
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    I had no requiredJavaVersion line in my eclipse.ini but adding it with 1.6 fixed the issue for me as well – Jiaaro May 12 '11 at 17:16
  • This did not fix the problem for me. I think it is an eclipse bug (385272). I posted more detail below. – broc.seib Aug 17 '12 at 20:58
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    I think for me it was restarting Eclipse that helped. After resetting the version to 1.5 and restarting again it was still faster than initially. This might be of help, though: Go to "Window -> Preferences -> General -> Appearance", then change the Appearance into "Classic" and uncheck Animations – magnoz Oct 24 '12 at 14:27
  • Whatever I do it's still 250ms to switch tabs. – Keldon Alleyne Dec 14 '12 at 15:13
3

Go with the 32-bit Cocoa release. The 64-bit won't help IMHO. It really works great on my 2.4 GHz MBP. I usually have about 30 files open, some fairly large, never experienced what you describe.

Try to get a new plain-vanilla 32-bit Cocoa distro, don't modify anything and check if there's an issue. It could be a rogue plugin, too. Do you have any installed?

Check you heap status. Open the Eclipse preferences, in the very first preferences page there's a "show heap status" option. You might be running low on memory. Check the swap status of your machine using the activity monitor - if it swaps a lot I'd recommend shutting down other applications. In general, I recommend 4 GB RAM for development machines.

zvikico
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  • Thanks for this! I assumed that x86_64 build would be faster, but 32 bit (Cocoa) is much much faster. This combined with Mike Miller's suggestion has changed Eclipse on the Mac from tolerable to delightful for me (using Helios on '10 MBP). – r00fus Aug 04 '10 at 22:52
2

I know this is kind of late to the game, but I found that changing the permissions to ~workspace.metadata.plugins\org.eclipse.e4.workbench to deny myself access stopped the slow-down issue.

Seems that Eclipse (4.2.0) writes out a corrupt settings file every so often, and when it's loaded in at startup again it slows everything down as it's constantly throwing errors internally. Changing the security on that directory so that Eclipse can't write to it is a kind of "fix"! It does mean that each time Eclipse is started it's back to its default settings, but if speed is more important, I think it's a worthwhile sacrifice.

user1692511
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2

There are now patches for Juno to begin addressing this issue. See comment #212 on bug 385272 for information on how to update your installation. If you wait a little longer you should find these fixes in the Kepler milestone on 12/21/2012.

(I believe the other suggestions posted here, e.g. increasing memory or tweeking various startup params or prefs might have some positive effect on performance, but the underlying problem is threads run amok as described in the bug report.)

broc.seib
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1

This eclipse bug report is spot-on with the behavior you describe. (I had the same experience using a new Juno installation on a beefy XP machine.)

https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=385272

The most useful part of the bug report was in comment 29, which suggests creating a new workspace. The easiest way to do this is:

1) exit eclipse

2) rename .../path/to/workspace/.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.e4.workbench/workbench.xmi (e.g., append ".old")

3) start eclipse

I believe changing -Dosgi.requiredJavaVersion=1.5 to 1.6 may help only incidentally, if at all.

broc.seib
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  • I am not convinced step 2) helped. I experienced this problem again, and simply restarting eclipse helped. I might have to revert to previous eclipse. – broc.seib Aug 31 '12 at 13:42
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    You now, I think you are right on that 1.5 -> 1.6. Part of the problem is that this slowness comes (sometimes) after a while of using, so people do some "voodoo trick" and come cheering immediately, and after a while of using finds out that it didn't work in a long term. (Using 4.2.1 still occurring.) – Ciantic Dec 04 '12 at 16:34
1

Increase the memory limits in eclipse.ini seems to have fixed this for me - not sure if it will stay fixed though

FROM:

-vmargs
-Xms40m
-Xmx512m

TO

-vmargs
-XX:MaxPermSize=512m
-Xms256m
-Xmx784m

ALSO - if you came from aptana3 and imported your project - You need to do this

  1. Click Project Properties
  2. Go to "Builders"
  3. Make sure there are no "Missing Builders" If there are, uncheck them - I had two left over from aptana when I imported my project (com.aptana.ide.core.unifiedBuilder AND com.aptana.editor.php.aptanaPhpBuilder)

---- UPDATE ----

It was fixed - but not for the reasons I thought. My SVN was no longer recognized by eclipse. As soon as I hit 'share with team' and reconnected it the tab-switching issues reappeared. I'm going to try and figure out if It's an svnKit vs JavaHL problem - I'm not sure which connector I picked when I setup eclipse this time.

If you want confirm this is your issue trying disconnecting from the SVN (Team->disconnect) and restarting eclipse

msEmmaMays
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  • Btw - I work on an extremely large code base- That may have something to do with needing higher memory limit - I didn't have the problem until I got the code-assist working (perhaps holding all my function and class names in memory was causing it to swap prematurely w/ the low memory limit?) – msEmmaMays Sep 20 '12 at 22:18
1

This might be the bug that was referred to. https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=282229

Jeff
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1

switching to 1.6 really helps. This is the link to locate eclipse.ini file for mac http://wiki.eclipse.org/Eclipse.ini

jimmy
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0

This is an known issue. Since you are using JDK1.5, you can try the Carbon variant.

J-16 SDiZ
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  • I thought Cocoa is a better version than Carbon? And is there a Java 6 JDK for MacOS X? If yes, can you please tell me where can i find it? – n179911 Jun 26 '09 at 06:02
  • Eclipse in Cacoa is new -- still somewhat buggy. – J-16 SDiZ Jun 26 '09 at 07:06
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    JDK 6 in Mac is 64-bit only, see http://support.apple.com/downloads/Java_for_Mac_OS_X_10_5_Update_4 – J-16 SDiZ Jun 26 '09 at 07:07
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    This is a known issue? Know to whom? Get the final Galileo release for Cocoa. It is less buggy then the Carbon implementation ever was (or ever will be). – zvikico Jun 26 '09 at 09:42
  • zvikico: Search in google, it is known as early as 3.5M3... and, How 3.5 not final Galileo? – J-16 SDiZ Jun 26 '09 at 12:47
  • Same thing here. Performance degraded after a week. Is there any filed bug at eclipse bugzilla? – tuler Jul 04 '09 at 19:33
0

For me the issue was the SVNKit connection integration to the Juno version of Eclipse. I am doing Android Development using the Juno version of Eclipse and when I turned on the SVNKit Team Integration I got the following issues described:

  1. Very slow switching between code files in the Eclipse IDE.
  2. Extra large gap and space in the tool bar between the print and Android SDK Manager icons.

For me... I turned off the following settings under Window->Preferences->Team->SVN under the View Settings... there was a setting for "Show synchronize info incrementally"... I turned that off and the switching between files improved.... but there is still a delay versus NOT having SVN connected.

Without SVN connected... the switching between files is normal.

I had Java 1.6 in the Eclipse.ini I did not change the settings for memory.

lepert
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0

TL;DR for the bug thread:

http://wiki.eclipse.org/Platform_UI/Juno_Performance_Investigation#Resolution

Worked for me.

Haw-Bin
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0

I experience the same issue using OS X 10.5.7 and Eclipse 3.5.2 on a fairly low end machine (early 2006 iMac with 1.5GB). Right after I start my machine however, everything is really snappy. I can even launch JBoss AS and there is still no slow-down. I monitor "Swap used" in activity monitor, and it stays at 0 bytes swap used.

Then, I launch something else, like iTunes and mail or switching to another account.

Things become slow then, which is expected, and I see "Swap used" increasing. Eclipse slows down to a crawl, and working with it is near to impossible.

Then I logout the other account, close down all other apps that I opened, so the state of my machine is basically the same again as when it was still fast. BUT... it stays dog slow! Even though I closed all the other apps, "Swap used" in activity monitor only decreases a little (from ~1.2GB to ~700MB). Just switching tabs between 2 very simple Java files takes up to 20 seconds, meanwhile I see in activity monitor that the CPU usage goes up to a solid 100%.

There definitely is something strange going on here. This does not seem like normal behavior. It is as-if Mac OS X goes into a 'slow mode' when I demand too much resources from it, but when the resources are there again it fails to recover.

Highly annoying!

If I reset the machine and open the exact same working set again (Eclipse with the same 2 files open, JBoss AS started in debug mode, Safari with 1 window) everything is really fast again.

Arjan Tijms
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I can now more or less confirm that the problem is really with Eclipse 3.5.

I've run Eclipse on a much more powerful Mac, a 27" core I7, 2.93Ghz with 8GB ram and a SSD running OS X 10.6.4. Initially this was extremely smooth and snappy, but after an up time of a dozen hours or so, Eclipse suddenly began to slow-down again. I had very little to almost nothing running in the background. Just Eclipse (32 bits, given it 1.5GB memory), JBoss AS and Safari.

A simple tab switch would take a few seconds and meanwhile I noticed the CPU load on one core going to 100%. The same happened with switching perspectives and various other operations.

When I restarted only Eclipse, everything was completely fast again. This happened a couple of times.

Arjan Tijms
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The original problem of slow switching between tabs has reappeared in Eclipse Neon (4.6.2 only?) using the Dark theme.

Solution: disable themed scrollbars in e4-dark_win.css (bottom of file): StyledText { swt-scrollbar-themed: false; [...]

Ogmios
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