Eclipse: What The Heck is it DOING?

[DRS.Usenet]

Sometimes I'll make a very simple request while working in the Eclipse
IDE and it will just go off and pound on the hard drive for FOREVER!
I'm talking minutes!

So I take a peek under the covers and figure it MUST be all of that
..history crap. Does that stuff ever GO AWAY?

Am I just missing the post in this group that has the words "history"
and "eclipse" arranged in such a way that would help me keep from
getting more of these forced coffee breaks?

Maybe there's a way to turn off or tone-down this history stuff, if
that's the source of the problem? (I don't even know that's the
problem, but I moved a class from one package to another in the same
project at the start of this note, and it just now got done pounding
the hard drive -- yes, I know I should get a faster machine, and I
shouldn't try and run MySQL and Eclipse together on this puny machine,
but MySQL doesn't just go away for minutes at a time!) Okay, I'm done.
Thanks for listening. I feel better, even if it isn't fixed.

--Dale--

 

[Kevin McMurtrie]

Sometimes I'll make a very simple request while working in the Eclipse
IDE and it will just go off and pound on the hard drive for FOREVER!
I'm talking minutes!

So I take a peek under the covers and figure it MUST be all of that
.history crap. Does that stuff ever GO AWAY?

Am I just missing the post in this group that has the words "history"
and "eclipse" arranged in such a way that would help me keep from
getting more of these forced coffee breaks?

Maybe there's a way to turn off or tone-down this history stuff, if
that's the source of the problem? (I don't even know that's the
problem, but I moved a class from one package to another in the same
project at the start of this note, and it just now got done pounding
the hard drive -- yes, I know I should get a faster machine, and I
shouldn't try and run MySQL and Eclipse together on this puny machine,
but MySQL doesn't just go away for minutes at a time!) Okay, I'm done.
Thanks for listening. I feel better, even if it isn't fixed.

--Dale--

Eclipse seems to get into a weird state where a build cache stops
working. Building each Java file requires ever increasing parse
recursion until it eventually can't get anything done. Some Eclipse
versions also have a bug where the problem window and problem markers
update continuously during building, draining available CPU time.

I've found that Eclipse works best if it can be given as much memory as
possible. I need about 700MB to get it to work on a project of 4500
classes. If it gets slow, I quickly abort the build and restart the app.

I want only one new feature in 3.2: Fix the bloat!

 

[Tim Tyler]

Some Eclipse versions also have a bug where the problem window and
problem markers update continuously during building, draining
available CPU time.

Are you implying that's been fixed?

Please, what version doesn't have the bug?

 

[Lisa]

Eclipse seems to get into a weird state where a build cache stops
working. Building each Java file requires ever increasing parse
recursion until it eventually can't get anything done. Some Eclipse
versions also have a bug where the problem window and problem markers
update continuously during building, draining available CPU time.

<snip>

what is parse recursion?

 

[Kevin McMurtrie]

Are you implying that's been fixed?

Please, what version doesn't have the bug?

I don't know what versions have/had the bug. The "Problems" tab would
blink italic forever and forced thread dumps will always show one thread
working on markers or something.

I'm using a recent 3.1 build.

 

[Kevin McMurtrie]

<snip>

what is parse recursion?

Following includes, following method declarations, etc. Mac OS X has an
"fs_usage" command that shows file accesses. It can be seen reading
includes over and over again with increasing frequency. Pretty soon
it's recursing through includes so badly that it can't finish anything.

That happening seems to have factors in the amount of free memory, how
often core classes have been modified, and bad luck. It's best to quit
and relaunch, maybe with more memory, before it gets totally stuck and
needs to be killed. Even a bit of VM swapping is better. I don't know
of any version that doesn't have the problem. My project has ~4600 java
files and the usual web app libraries.