Eclipse Build Error "A class file was not written. The project may be inconsistent, if so try refreshing this project and building it"

Question

I have been struggling with a very weird issue that has suddenly popped up on the latest version of Eclipse Classic (4.2.2).

Everytime I try creating or refactoring a class or subclass in any of my projects (all Java) in my Eclipse workspace I get an error at the very top of my class that says

A class file was not written. The project may be inconsistent, if so try refreshing this project and building it

Again, this happens when I create new classes. And even when I rename current classes, then undo the renaming, its totally fine, but changing a single character in the name causes this error to happen for that specific class.

I have Auto Build on, and I tried multiple times to clean and refresh every project as well as restart Eclipse entirely.

I have literally no idea how to even start figuring out how to fix this. The solutions i've found through search didn't help, so i'm hoping I might find any clues here.

Did you try what it suggests, which is to right-click on your project and select "refresh" ? — user1676075, Jun 17 '13 at 19:56
I did many times, and i'm pretty sure cleaning the project with auto build is the same thing as refreshing. — Sammy Guergachi, Jun 17 '13 at 19:58
Did you configure anything in the build path? Maybe excluded / included classes? I will also suggest that you start a new workspace and copy the source files into it. — Elist, Jun 17 '13 at 22:54
I tried both and there seems to be nothing different about the build path and importing to a new workplace doesnt fix the issue. — Sammy Guergachi, Jun 21 '13 at 14:56
One very curious thing that has hit me a couple of times with Eclipse is a bug(or feature?) in Windows, where full path of a file exceeds some number of characters (512?). In this case, Eclipse will silently fail to write the file, but don't realize until later. — Krumelur, Jun 24 '13 at 21:47
I know about the 512 character limit issue and I already checked to make sure none of my classes exceed that number of characters. — Sammy Guergachi, Jun 28 '13 at 17:39
I also experienced this issue. It turns out my disk drive was full. This is usually one of the first things to check when an app starts playing up. iTunes goes bonkers, as does Photoshop. Free up space and do a clean to fix up. — Orange Peel, Nov 13 '14 at 10:04

score 13 · Accepted Answer · edited Oct 10 '14 at 08:26

13

I had the same problem and here's how I solved it in the end: It turned out that the disc space on the drive where workspace resides was full.

Silly mistake but worth checking.

edited Oct 10 '14 at 08:26

blalasaadri

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answered Sep 14 '14 at 13:22

Ganesh Satpute

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This does in fact answer the question. He was saying that the solution is to have some disk space on the drive where your workspace is, which is what solved my problem. – cubecubed Jul 03 '15 at 05:58
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Eclipse should check for storage space, that is so simple to do, instead of creating that error. This solved for me too, neither cleaning/rebuilding worked (of course). Out of complete despair, he asked for a solution and this is the solution, so this answers the question. – Aquarius Power Jan 25 '16 at 23:34
I also just had the problem (Eclipse 4.7.3a), and in my case the cause was that a directory within the output directory (`/target`) lay on a faulty SSD "sector". So neither Eclipse nor Windows could write to that directory, nor delete it (e.g. with clean). After 1,5hrs of CHKDSK it worked again. – Markus Mitterauer Aug 30 '18 at 14:11

score 13 · Answer 2 · edited Sep 07 '17 at 13:47

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In my case, this was caused by the fact that the build output directories were owned by a different user, and Eclipse could not write into them.

edited Sep 07 '17 at 13:47

mkl

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answered Sep 07 '17 at 13:24

user8574877

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score 12 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 26 '19 at 18:12

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I had the same issues, the following worked for me:

Right click eclipse then running "as an Administrator"
Click Project > Clean.

answered Mar 26 '19 at 18:12

Richie_b

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score 6 · Answer 4 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:31

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Clean your workspace by starting eclipse from the command line with the -clean argument :

eclipse -clean

See also How to run eclipse in clean mode? and what happens if we do so?

edited May 23 '17 at 12:31

Community

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answered Jul 01 '13 at 12:15

user18428

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This worked for me, I copy a lot of code over manually from my customers workstation (long story), and try to match the folder structures up but some of the security settings coming across are muddled. So using `Project` -> `Clean...` from the menu resolved this for me! – Setherith Mar 19 '20 at 09:49
Once we clean the workspace with command prompt "eclipse.bat" -clean, as the workspace opens I gave project clean and the error is gone. After that we can start as usual through start menu without any specific arguments to it. – rinilnath Jul 19 '20 at 18:09

score 3 · Answer 5 · answered May 21 '19 at 17:34

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I solved this problem by running Eclipse as root.

answered May 21 '19 at 17:34

Bret Hogg

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score 2 · Answer 6 · edited Sep 10 '18 at 06:35

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I had the same issue on Mac OS X. I had a maven project.

Try running the following command on Terminal. This looks like an access issue.

sudo mvn clean

Provide password for admin user.

Then open Eclipse and refresh your project.

edited Sep 10 '18 at 06:35

Pang

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answered Sep 10 '18 at 06:20

Kapil Suri

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score 1 · Answer 7 · answered Jun 28 '13 at 07:41

We are using Eclipse here too and have to handle a workspace with more than 200 plug-ins. Every now and then people have similar problems with their workspace and inconsistencies reported in a weird way by Eclipse. What people here usually do is (next step only in case previous step didn't help): - trying to ContextMenu->Team->Clean/Refresh the whole workspace - creating a new workspace and check out all necessary files from the repository - reinstalling Eclipse to a new directory

From my experience after using the Eclipse IDE on a daily basis for many years, it doesn't make very much sense to waste too much time with these issues, unless they aren't solved by one of the steps above. It takes too much time to struggle with these things, while starting from scratch is done in an hour or less (and usually fixes the issue). If your Eclipse still behaves strangely it might make sense to go through your installed plug-ins. Not all external plug-ins follow the Eclipse guidelines and can seriously harm the performance and operational consistency of your Eclipse installation (E.g. Sonar Plug-in, Toad Plug-in, ...)

score 1 · Answer 8 · answered Mar 11 '17 at 14:56

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In my case this kind of error caused due to disk space got full and it got resolved by just freeing disk space where eclipse have been installed. That is c/d/e drivers.

answered Mar 11 '17 at 14:56

sri

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score 1 · Answer 9 · answered Dec 12 '18 at 13:10

I come up with the same error, and in my case, this is because the permission of the project/bin directory is not recursively 775

I fixed it by:

Remove the project/bin directory: sudo rm -rf project/bin
Switch to Eclipse, rebuild the project: Project->Clean...

Then no errors.

score 1 · Answer 10 · answered Aug 05 '19 at 15:21

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Try to launch Eclipse as Administrator.

answered Aug 05 '19 at 15:21

Alexander Gorbenko

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Sagar Talreja · Answer 11 · 2023-03-14T08:23:09.027

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I fixed it by:

1.Remove (delete the target folder) from the project/target

2.Switch to Eclipse, force maven update the project

no errors.

edited Mar 14 '23 at 08:23

answered Mar 14 '23 at 08:21

Sagar Talreja

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score 0 · Answer 12 · answered Aug 07 '15 at 10:08

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In my case such error was caused by a question mark in a quoted method name (I use geb+spock combination for automated testing).
So this method name will throw an error "Do you want something?"()
And this will not "Do you want something"()

answered Aug 07 '15 at 10:08

Raman Tretyak

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score 0 · Answer 13 · answered Oct 04 '16 at 09:55

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It may not be the best response but to fix it, I've just delete the error marker.

answered Oct 04 '16 at 09:55

Manu

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score 0 · Answer 14 · answered Feb 06 '18 at 14:06

Had the same issue. but cleaning the project and restart eclipse didn't help and disk space was not the issue. Solved the issue by copy the code to notepad(just to not lose it) and then delete the class, recreate it and paste the code back in again.

score 0 · Answer 15 · answered May 26 '18 at 16:59

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I solved it changed the owner of the project files. I changed from root(old owner) to user my current(user that i use with eclipse).

answered May 26 '18 at 16:59

Carlos Mario

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score 0 · Answer 16 · answered Aug 25 '18 at 22:24

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Just changed and saved java file to recompile the class. Then error disappeared.

answered Aug 25 '18 at 22:24

Jovo Skorupan

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score 0 · Answer 17 · answered Dec 18 '18 at 04:13

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I was try run

Project->Clean...

And Rebuild. My problem was resolved

answered Dec 18 '18 at 04:13

Sơn Việt

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score 0 · Answer 18 · edited Feb 25 '19 at 03:07

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For linux (Debia) and working on Spring boot project (maven):

$ sudo mvn clean

Then open Eclipse and File -> Refresh.

edited Feb 25 '19 at 03:07

Miroslav Glamuzina

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answered Feb 25 '19 at 00:02

AJSuarez

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score 0 · Answer 19 · answered Apr 03 '19 at 20:22

I had same issue, it is something similar but this post didn't help in my case. I have many inner classes which is causing the compiler to create class names with all inner class names together that is creating class name more than 255 character file limit on NTFS! read it in some other blog. I thought it will be helpful to post here.

Ex : classA$InnerClassB$......InncerClassZ.class in target folder it won't generate the class if it exceeds this limit. Try renaming your inner class name shortened. In my case i have to add InnerclassZ as its exceeding its not generating class and Eclipse complaining.

A class file was not written. The project may be inconsistent, if so try refreshing....

I shortened InnerClassZ to IClassZ fixed the issue.

score 0 · Answer 20 · answered Aug 09 '19 at 09:31

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I had the same issue and it got fixed by running eclipse in administrator mode Eclipse Shortcut-->Right click-->More-->Run as Administrator

answered Aug 09 '19 at 09:31

Prem

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score 0 · Answer 21 · answered Apr 29 '20 at 06:10

I've been throught that error once when I used wsdl2java to extract java classes from a wsdl, it turns out that all classes were created in the same "class", causing end classes with long names (error - File name too long). When I organized and rename some classes the error disappeared.

score 0 · Answer 22 · answered Sep 10 '20 at 13:45

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I had this issue. I did the following, it resolved.

Open Eclipse in Administrator mode; Right click on eclipse.exe "Run as administrator" Clean all projects.

answered Sep 10 '20 at 13:45

nag

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score 0 · Answer 23 · answered Jan 08 '21 at 17:22

@Denny's answer put me on the right track, though in my case it was the target directory. I deleted it for some reason and something automatically recreated with owner root. Changing the directory owner was not enough as it contained files that were also owned by root. So make sure to really remove the complete content of the directory and to change the owner.

score 0 · Answer 24 · answered May 07 '22 at 19:21

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In my case current user didn't have access to this project dir

answered May 07 '22 at 19:21

Anand Rockzz

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score 0 · Answer 25 · edited Mar 08 '23 at 18:44

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I had the same issue, and the root cause was that some directories were owned by another user. I would not suggest to run eclipse by root user as you might later ran into other issues, instead just make the current user own everything inside the folder (and the folder itself):

sudo chown $USER:USERGROUP -R ~/path

sudo chown alice:sudo -R JavaProjects/

edited Mar 08 '23 at 18:44

Tyler2P

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answered Mar 01 '23 at 23:15

Alice

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score 0 · Answer 26 · answered Jul 12 '23 at 06:37

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In my case it was Carbonite trying to backup the class files using a poor internet connection... eclispe couldn't delete one or more class files because Carbonite had locked them.

answered Jul 12 '23 at 06:37

Andy Carson

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score -2 · Answer 27 · answered Mar 25 '19 at 04:45

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Before giving a try to the above solutions. Just cleaned the project and it worked.

answered Mar 25 '19 at 04:45

Baburao A

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Eclipse Build Error "A class file was not written. The project may be inconsistent, if so try refreshing this project and building it"

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