Do too many plug-ins slow down Eclipse?

Question

I have recently installed a new project into my Eclipse and also needed to install some plug-ins to manage it. I also installed other plug-ins which I do not need to manage the project but thought it will be nice to try out.

After this, I noticed that my IDE isn’t as fast to respond as before. I’m not sure if it has something to do with the size of the new project (which is almost 8 times larger than what I had before in my workspace) or the number of plug-ins installed.

Since I can’t do anything about the size of the project, and Christmas has passed and I won’t get new hardware any time soon, I was wondering if there is something I can do about the plug-ins (except uninstall them :P).

Can I configure them as to be lazy loaded whenever I open an associated perspective or view? I’m not sure exactly how they work but I would imagine that this is already the case.

Is there something I can do, plug-in related, to speed up my IDE?

Thank you.

Answer 1

During Eclipse start-up it loads modules and plugins so it is true. Also using too many plugins will increase the RAM need of the IDE. That may be the cause.

There is an Early Startup feature which allows plugins to load once Workbench is started:

Description: This extension point is used to register plugins that want to be activated on startup. The class given as the attribute on the startup element must implement the interface org.eclipse.ui.IStartup. Once the workbench is started, the method earlyStartup() will be called from a separate thread.
...
Note that this form is deprecated and should no longer be used. Its functioning relies on the availability of the org.eclipse.core.runtime.compatibility plug-in and the org.eclipse.core.runtime.compatibility.registry fragment. Plugins that provide an extension to this extension point are listed in the workbench preferences and the user may disable any plugin from early startup.

Link: http://help.eclipse.org/help32/index.jsp?topic=/org.eclipse.platform.doc.isv/reference/extension-points/org_eclipse_ui_startup.html

Answer 2

Eclipse only loads the plugin XML of your plugins at the start, so the overhead per plugin is minimal. The classes of the plugin are loaded when they needed ... at least if the plugins are programmed properly. Most likely it is not the number of plugins that causes the slowdown.

It may be the size of your program (I havn't noticed a slowdown with java project with aproximatly 200.000 LOC).

Or it may be one or two badly programmed plugins. You can try to deactivate one by one to find the one that causes the slowdown. Then you can decide if you can replace or remove it.

Answer 3

Not sure if the plugins are your issue, but here are two things which helped me in the past:

First, I suggest you fiddle with the Xmx and Xms parameters for eclipse. Giving Eclipse the maximum memory it can take helps a lot. I set Xmx to 1024M for example, but it can go higher (it does have a cap though, but I can't remember what it is). Another parameter to look at is the launcher.XXMaxPermSize.

Second, and I am not sure this applies to you - but it is worth mentioning because it is so silly it may be overlooked. I had my eclipse workspace in my home directory for a while - which was stored on the server in the next room. When I moved it to a local directory on my machine, the response time was much faster. Maybe you overlooked something like this.

Answer 4

As far as I know, plugin are do not impact the overall performance of eclipse unless they are activated. To be sure, see this SO question

You can create some custom perspective in which you explicitly do not activate some plugins, but once a plugin is used, it will stay active as long as eclipse is opened.

Start first by optimizing your eclipse.ini (see this SO answer for that), and see if the issue remains.

Answer 5

Some plugins are loaded at startup and allow you to specify not to load them initially. They may be loaded on demand later on.

Open the Preferences and navigate to General -> Startup and Shutdown. You will find a list of plugins which are marked to be automatically loaded at startup. You can disable any of these plugins. However, if you do use them, they will be loaded on demand.

Answer 6

It certainly can do. We have been using MyEclipse (which is basically Eclipse with a large number of plugins integrated together) and it runs pretty slow out of the box. You should disable any that you aren't using if you find the performance unacceptable.

Answer 7

Many Eclipse PlugIns add validation cycles to the build process. For example the JBoss Tools add Seam Validators that consume a lot of resources during build. You can disable some unnecessary validtors using the Eclipse preferences.