I have been using Eclipse Photon on Ubuntu 16.04 for a little while. Twice now it has had a glitch and prevents me from getting back into it. It hangs on the splash screen saying
Loading org.eclipse.tm.terminal.view.ui
If I start it from the command line, the last thing it says in the terminal window is:
com.google.gwt.eclipse.wtp.maven.GwtMavenComponentContributor.contribute(IMavenComponentBinder)
The last lines (minus the full stack trace) from the log are:
!SESSION 2018-10-17 13:54:42.690 -----------------------------------------------
eclipse.buildId=4.8.0.I20180611-0500
java.version=1.8.0_45
java.vendor=Oracle Corporation
BootLoader constants: OS=linux, ARCH=x86_64, WS=gtk, NL=en_GB
Framework arguments: -product org.eclipse.epp.package.jee.product
Command-line arguments: -os linux -ws gtk -arch x86_64 -product org.eclipse.epp.package.jee.product
!ENTRY org.eclipse.egit.core 2 0 2018-10-17 13:54:54.327
!MESSAGE Builtin LFS support not present/detected
!STACK 0
java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.eclipse.jgit.lfs.BuiltinLFS cannot be found by org.eclipse.egit.core_5.0.0.201806131550-r
at org.eclipse.osgi.internal.loader.BundleLoader.findClassInternal(BundleLoader.java:508)
I have found by experimentation that if rename in .metadata/.plugins:
org.eclipse.core.resources
(even though the directory is empty) then Eclipse will start. Alas, all my projects have gone. Perhaps that happened when the crunch occurred and so there is no way to recover anyway.
The crunch actually happened when I closed a Java editor window. I noticed that it paused for about 15 seconds. It came back to life and I left it for a few moments then pressed the top left exit button and confirmed that I did want to exit. This all went as usual, but then Eclipse got stuck when trying to start it again.
If anyone knows a recovery method, or a way to stop it from happening then I'd appreciate knowing about it.
Thanks in advance.