Eclipse compilation issue

Question

I have a large codebase added into the Eclipse project and have added one External Tool providing the path where the class for that java file is to be kept and the Classpath. The build folder is somewhere else.

Now when I need to compile only one file, Eclipse starts building whole of the codebase(>100 MB of Java files), it takes my system down and I have to wait for the whole compilation to go through.

Can only one java file be compiled without building the whole code? Any pointers would be helpful.

Answer 1

I think you would benefit greatly with a build tool, such as ant or maven. You can have a target to compile only one class without building the whole code, or any other related task.

Answer 2

Have you built the project at least once ?

Eclipse builds incrementally using the saved state from the previous build. So if you build your project once, the subsequent builds would only pick up the changes made "after" the previous build.