Speed up your eclipse as a super fast IDE

mattgreenrocks 14 years ago |

I love Eclipse for Java, but it seems absurd that this page even exists in the first place. I'm OK with a long startup time, but the amount of finagling I had to do in order to get the Android environment to run without hiccuping every 5 minutes is pretty ridiculous. You'd think desktop Java would move to, oh, I don't know, a model where you don't have to set the heap size like we did in Mac OS 7? It just seems archaic to sit there and try to reason how much heap space we'd possibly use ahead of time.

I don't want to care about that, and shouldn't have to.

d0m 14 years ago |

Anyone using Eclipse can confirm that? I've moved away from that IDE for years because how slow it was. (Also because it was so damn hard to configure it the way I wanted)

I remember though putting somewhat similar in my config file.

dekz 14 years ago | |

The most notable change is probably the RAM disk, anyone with an SSD would be able to agree that eclipse is fast (more usable) when running on a drive with an SSD. All that compile on the fly as you're typing would be quite IO bound.

I use eclipse at work on a spinning disk and at home on an SSD, using the SSD makes an incredible difference.

pan69 14 years ago | |

I'm running Eclipse on Ubuntu (x64) on OpenJDK and it works fine. My hardware isn't particularly fast either. I might reboot one a week or so. I do have 8GB of memory though.

bad_user 14 years ago | | |

For some reason, on Ubuntu x86, Eclipse is really slow for me.

IntelliJ Idea is much better. And now the community edition comes with capabilities for Android projects.

I recommend it instead of Eclipse.

zokier 14 years ago | | |

What JVM you are running? See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2694965

ashr 14 years ago | |

Yes. With the eclipse.ini changes alone mine starts in 6 seconds now instead of 30+ seconds. Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 CPU, 4 GB DDR3 RAM.

kleiba 14 years ago | |

Out of curiosity, what are you using now?

zubairov 14 years ago |

Reduce in start time does not automatically mean your IDE will work faster.

vrotaru 14 years ago |

As for moving jdk instal to ramdisk, on can (ab)use the fact that in Debian/Ubuntu /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun is a symbolic link to /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-${version}/

So create a tmpfs and mount it under /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun

    sudo mount -t tmpfs -o size=200M,nr_inodes=2k,mode=0775,noatime,nodiratime tmpfs /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun
    cd /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun
    cp -a /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-${version}/* .

Done. Of course, if you have more than one jdk installed, update-alternatives may be necessary

planb 14 years ago |

Short version: Buy an SSD.

davideuler 14 years ago |

On my Aspire 4745G laptop with 4g ram windows 7 x64, it is fairy slow to run eclipse x64 with jdk x64. So I adjusted the vm arguments and some eclipse setting mentioned above, and found it runs super fast after the change.

If it works or does not work on your machine, or any other smart way to speed up your eclipse, pls let me know.

longlistener 14 years ago |

Gads, its unfortunate that the site hosting this article is so filled with spammy ads -- the full screen intro is acceptable, but the full screen popup is not, and having both is just nuts. I like not using adblock, so site can get some impression revenue, but sites like this continue to make me think adblock is needed.

mgkimsal 14 years ago |

I can't seem to find an 'eclipse.ini' file on my system at all. I had eclipse sts and zend studio both installed (both based on eclipse) but "locate eclipse.ini" nets me nothing. Perhaps it's config.ini? Or somewhere else these recommended changes should be made?

shareme 14 years ago | |

sts and zend rename it to something *.ini

wr1472 14 years ago |

I couldn't get it to work with the -Xmn128m argument. It wouldn't startup with it in, without it certainly does speed up the startup time.

davideuler 14 years ago | |

curious what's your jdk and eclipse version is ?

elb0w 14 years ago |

or use vim

devinfoley 14 years ago | |

I use vim for everything but Java. When it's Java time, I use Eclipse. In fact, if every language worked as well in Eclipse as Java does, I'd probably use Eclipse for everything (like I used to). The productivity gains you get from using Eclipse for Java vs a text editor (vim) are HUGE. This is not a fault of vim, it's a fault of Java for being so verbose.

Example: you can move a method to a new class in Java, and Eclipse will go through your entire project and find all references to that method and update them for you.

I guess it's the same reason C# and MS coders love Visual Studio so much.

That said, I try to avoid using Java, and generally stick to vim.

chillax 14 years ago | | |

But wouldn't you apply some of those refactorings in other languages too? Movings methods, refactoring out inner classes, removing/adding parameters to methods and constructors etc. It all adds up if the language has good support in your IDE.

I'm not a power user of vim, but perhaps there are some kind of extensions for some of these things there?

babebridou 14 years ago | | |

I wish there was be something, actually, that would match what you can do with the Eclipse/Java combo for other languages.

Eclipse turns java into a ctrl-space fest. People yell at java for being verbose and statically typed, but all this verbosity is what allows an IDE such as Eclipse to exist. Just press ctrl+space and the verbosity turns into clarity and speed for both the programmer and the IDE.

I have more than a million lines of codes behind me since I learned how to program, 4 years ago. That's 250 thousand lines of working code per year, and I didn't even code more than half-time in java, and I can't type faster than 40wpm. I'm not advocating quantity vs quality, just saying that quantity becomes a completely irrelevant measure when you use Eclipse & Java, and that's very refreshing; you can keep coding long, dumb, and not performance-critical code while you think about another more important/complex section of your project, participate to a meeting, discuss stuff on the phone - you just set sail and let Eclipse do the hard rowing for you.

As for refactoring - delete a class named MyClass with a doStuff() method in a project, create a new interface MyClass with a doStuff() method in another project and another package, add this project as a dependency to the first project, select the first project, press ctrl+shift+O, et voila, every file was fixed, and it simply works within a few seconds even if there are a thousand sources referencing that MyClass. I'm not sure if there's any language/IDE that allows that sort of fast & furious refactor, but do tell!

What are other great IDE/language combos?

Mavrik 14 years ago | | |

Other combos? Prehaps Visual Studio for C# with ReSharper. It even gives suggestions about folding loops into LINQ statements and simillar.

What I'm really disappointed is abysmal quality of IDEs for dynamic languages (Python and JavaScript for example). I know that's because of the language design, but writing code in those languages after coming from Java/Eclipse or VS2010/C# feels like I'm crippled.

babebridou 14 years ago | | |

Unity3d has its own javascript-like language and introduced the keyword #pragma-strict - it enforces static typing within a script. I imagine an IDE could make good use of such toggle, for the best of both worlds.

http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/ScriptReference/ind...

chillax 14 years ago | | |

Personally I prefer intellij due to good integration with maven, spring and hibernate out of the box. It's been some years since I tried out Eclipse, so I'm going to try out the latest release in some spare time since I now hear maven support is getting much better.

Jetbrains also have a (fairly) decent Ruby IDE as well. And also ok JS support in their software.

Derbasti 14 years ago | | |

There are some, but Vim is a text editor at its core, not an IDE. It excels at editing text but it pretty much treats everything as such, too. It does not have much concept of 'code'.

primitur 14 years ago | | |

refactor in vim:

    :g/\<sv\>/s//some_nicer_name/g

jpitz 14 years ago | | |

That's not refactoring. That's a specific refactoring known as rename.

Rename is handy, and might even be the most often applied refactoring, but it's also the easiest to craft. Move Method, Pull Up, et al are useful and not as easy to craft.

Then there is the Move class refactoring, which, if integrated well with your source control system, is an almost magical time saver.

bgrohman 14 years ago | | |

Have you seen Eclim?

http://eclim.org/

You can either 1) run a headless eclipse with a vim front end, 2) use a headed eclipse and vim together, or 3) use a headed eclipse with gvim as an embedded editor.

Looks like it might be worth a try.

wisty 14 years ago | |

Vim doesn't compile as you type, so it can't give you much intelligent interaction with your code.

Obviously, there are work-arounds (like using clean APIs and libraries), but that's not always an option.

primitur 14 years ago | | |

>intelligent interaction with your code.

I use cscope for intelligent interaction with my code, vim as the primary editor/interface (keybindings for cscope are awesome..) and ddd in an 'always on top' window for building/debugging .. in comparison to my Eclipse (android) environment where I am also working, I think that an easy balance can be made if you use the 'apps as pipes' philosophy that a good vim experience requires ..

dsl 14 years ago | | |

Good programmers don't need this.

wisty 14 years ago | | |

It depends on the stack you are working with. Need to work with a big, unfamiliar, badly documented API? Good programmers don't want to be in that kind of situation, but it happens.

primitur 14 years ago | | |

For me, cscope+vim+ddd has all the editing/building/debugging power I need .. I think with this combination of tools I can match the prowess of any fat IDE for any degree of 'cruddy project' > 'power codebase' ..

jpitz 14 years ago | | |

I'll disagree, and assert that this is the logical conclusion of your statement: http://xkcd.com/378/

nih 14 years ago | | |

Good programmers code in hex.

innes 14 years ago | | |

Good programmers don't need this, like good sprinters don't need bicycles.

mattgreenrocks 14 years ago | | |

Ah yes, the classic "if you haven't memorized all of the APIs and their side effects you're not a real developer" schtick.

drivebyacct2 14 years ago |

The best recommendation is to make sure you're using the Sun JDK and not the GCC-GCJ. That alone will constitute a large speed up. I imagine the ram disk will give basic speed-up. Can't attest to the others though, Eclipse runs more than fast enough here.

baconface 14 years ago | |

How does the Sun JDK significantly outperform the GCC-GCJ?

Locke1689 14 years ago | | |

What do you mean by this? The gcj JIT is shit compared to the jdk, that's how.

davideuler 14 years ago | | |

GCJ is fairy slow.

drivebyacct2 14 years ago | | |

It just does? Try installing Eclipse from the Ubuntu repos, then download it from eclipse.org and run it with the Sun JVM and Sun JDK. Tell me it doesn't scream in comparison.

hackermom 14 years ago |

From what I can tell, this only speeds up Eclipse' ridiculous start-up time, or am I wrong? This doe~freeze~sn't me~freeze~an that the IDE it~freeze~self will bec~freeze~ome smooth.

nl 14 years ago | |

Turn off autobuild.

I find it's much smoother, and Ctrl-S (save), Ctrl-B (build) isn't too much of an overhead over just doing Ctrl-S.

Also, put your code on a SSD.

vrotaru 14 years ago | |

If it speeds class loading and reduces GC times it should freeze less, as well

noduerme 14 years ago |

Some nasty script on this page crashes firefox.