Freezing Eclipse

Question

I use Eclipse for programming in PHP and Java(Android) and sometimes Python, unfortunately Eclipse is nowadays much more often freezing. Often when I write this bracket "[" for defining an array in PHP, Eclipse just freeze and I have to close it manualy and start again. I've noted also, that Eclipse is consuming really much of my RAM... 200-300MiB of my available memory is nothing special. :-( Is there any way to check, what is consuming the memory in Eclipse and why it's freezing?

I'm running on Windows Vista, 3GB RAM.

Answer 1

First thing, make sure that you have the latest version of Eclipse. Second, you can turn off things like automatic building, reporting problems as you type, content assist, and you can turn off the "Link with Editor" on the outline view to boost performance. The drawbacks, of course, are that you won't have those features.

As your code grows, with these features turned on, your performance decreases.

The memory range that you report can be normal, depending on the size of your code. However, the memory shouldn't continue to grow if you're not adding to the code.

I haven't witnessed any memory leaks in the latest version of Eclipse.

I was experiencing long delays with Eclipse on a large PHP project before I upgraded to a dual core processor.

Answer 2

Start by looking at the error log. Under Windows → Show View → Other → Error Log. See if you can find any errors.

Another option is to try starting with a new Workspace (File → Switch Workspace). You can easily import your existing projects and see if the problem persists.

I would also recommend upgrading to PDT 2.2, which is part of the upcoming Helios release (Eclipse 3.6).

Answer 3

Start eclipse with -consolelog option.