Eclipse Android Plugin sluggish

Question

I have recently installed the most recent Android Plugin for Eclipse on the most recent Eclipse version. The problem is that the syntax proposals are now very, very slow. I have to switch them off.

To be precise. If I press "." after an Android class instance, it takes several seconds, before the proposals for the methods appear, and I can continue typing. After I type a letter, it takes again seconds before I can continue.

Looks like the program is download something from a very slow server. This problem does not exist with Java core classes, and it did also not exist in the previous version I was using.

Is there anything I can do about that?

Rene

Answer 1

I had the pauses on auto-complete too, and there's an existing question about it. For me, the solution was to switch to Eclipse 3.5 instead of 3.6; this is advised on the Android Developers website (though it's not a very prominent message!):

Caution: There are known issues with the ADT plugin running with Eclipse 3.6. Please stay on 3.5 until further notice.

Others have had luck modifying eclipse.ini settings to force Java 1.6 and increase the amount of memory used, though this was for combating general slowness.

Answer 2

I'm not trying to flamebait here, but please do consider the Intellij IDEA for Android development. I switched from Eclipse to IDEA for Android development about a year ago and I'm quite happy.

Intellij IDEA for Android has just been open-sourced.

Answer 3

I saw the keystroke delay happen when I first used eclipse as a result of using the "wrong" JRE to run eclipse (which is itself a java application). Try making sure you are using the JRE that comes with the JDK from Sun, er, Oracle. Unfortunately more nobly motivated alternatives may not work as well.

Answer 4

For best performance and hassle free I would recommend the best combination is :

1) Eclipse (J2EE) 3.5

2) JDK 1.6 Update 20

and remaining all are not worth for setting Android development.