I have been using Eclipse on Mac OS X from home over a VPN to develop GWT and perl code in a local workspace for my employer. Recently a repeatable and severe lockup began occurring whenever I tried to edit Debug (or Run) launch configurations. I got the spinning beachball of death (SBOD) and, if I waited long enough (10-15 minutes) it would eventually stop and I could at least close the dialog.
I tried numerous things until a coworker suggested trying it with VPN turned off. To my surprise (and somewhat delight) it began behaving normally in the above scenario. I have been using Eclipse in this manner for about a year with no problems so naturally I am racking my brain trying to think of recent changes to VPN and/or to my split tunnel script (euphemistically called 'multihome') that could account for this abnormal behavior. This lockup occurs with or without the split tunnel.
I should also point out that the "initializing Java tooling" progress status ALWAYS occurs when starting eclipse and takes about a minute to complete with VPN connection. Normal (<2 seconds) without.
So, I'm starting to learn how to use wireshark and possibly will look into using packetlogger as well in an attempt to find out more about this strange issue.
Anyone have a clue as to what might be causing this?