Eclipse performance on my G4 is horrific - any thoughts on a replacement?

Question

I have a 5yr old G4 PowerBook that I use while travelling, and I had intended to get some work done whilst I am away for the next few weeks.

Eclipse just seems to be horrendously slow on it. I've tried tweaking the memory allocated to the VM, but it doesn't seem to do very much :)

Any thoughts as to why it's so slow? I don't get this problem on my desktop - and that has less RAM, although it's running Linux.

If I'm flogging a dead horse, what would you recommend as a Java development environment?

Ideally, I would want good code completion, as my mental capacity is somewhat limited :)

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Thank you all kindly for your responses. I've just set-up netbeans on the laptop, removed some of the cruft, and imported my project. After taking about half an hour scanning the project (there are a ton of external libraries) I am pleased to say that it is very responsive. Code completion is working nicely (although not quite as intuitive as eclipse). Unfortunately, I seem to be able to only select one of your answers - although i'll be using many of them. A new laptop is on the cards for when I get back from my trip.

Answer 1

I've been using Eclipse for years, and I found that it never ran acceptably fast on my Mac until I got Ganymede (Eclipse 3.4) and ran it on my Core 2 Duo Macbook w/ 2GB of RAM. Before I had both of those things, it was only ever bearable on Linux or Windows. I'd recommend upgrading your computer. :-) Eclipse is, after all, a beast of a program no matter how you spin it.

Answer 2

Eclipse is a one of the best IDEs for Java. What is the configuration of your G4? One thing you can do to make things snappier is disable automatic building in the background. You can do this by unchecking Project->Build Automatically. Doing so will prevent eclipse from continuously building in the background and it will be more responsive to your editing needs. Also if you are using the web development plugin you can disable jsp and xml validation.

Answer 3

I like Netbeans, it is relatively small and fast but since Oracle is now the owner of Sun I don´t know about the future of it.

Answer 4

If you are worried about speed use something like vim or textmate.

Otherwise you have to realize, Eclipse comes with a LOT built in with it, hence the long loading time. If you find yourself not using most of its features then just use a text editor.

Neatbeans is supposedly more light weight.

Answer 5

I've had that problem a few times. I've found that some systems that run Eclipse like a pig do well with Aptana or NetBeans. I'd try those first, as they are both pretty powerful.

Answer 6

I would recommend giving IntelliJ a try. It might run a bit faster for you, so it's worth a try. It's made by JetBrains, the same company that makes ReSharper and TeamCity. (If you like it you can buy it... it's free to try).

http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/

Good luck with your quest!

Answer 7

I've found two primary limiters to Eclipse performance:

1. Available RAM (2GB is a minimum on a Windows PC)
2. Hard drive speed (I've had lots of issues with slow and/or highly fragmented drives.)

Laptops have notoriously slow drives - and it's often compounded by the drive going into "power save" mode (thus spinning more slowly.)

We also used to run Eclipse on top of ClearCase dynamic views....talk about a performance beast....

It may also be worth your time to trim down Eclipse (disabling unneeded plugins and the like.) Click "Help"->"Manage Configuration" to get to the interface where you can do this. The Eclipse distributions come with lots and lots of powerful tools - many of which most of us never use.

Answer 8

I love IntelliJ from JetBrains.

I used Eclipse for four years and loved it. But since I was shown IntelliJ I've never gone back. I feel strongly enough where I pony up the cash to buy a personal license. Worth every cent.

Answer 9

I would definitely not recommend IntelliJ Idea if speed is your overriding concern. I personally find it just as slow, if not slower than eclipse... It too is a dog.

By way of example - If idea crashes, which it generally does on a daily basis, then all projects must be re-indexed (a lengthy process) whether open at the time or not; an excruciating process, especially on sub-optimal boxes. The kicker is that it also re-indexes the entire JDK at the same time.

I think it sad indictment of desktop java on the whole that a decent, powerful IDE cannot, it seems, be implemented on top of it offering anywhere near acceptable performance.

I've worked with netbeans, eclipse, idea and also with visual studio. The performance comparison between the former 3 and the latter is striking!

Answer 10

In my experience Java is just not that responsive on the Mac. A fairly fresh Eclipse on my 3 GB MBP feels slower than my work machine, which is 2 GB Dell D620 with lots of projects.

Want to try a crazy idea? Install linux on your PB G4 and try running Eclipse in that. Worth a shot.