Eclipse PDT is freezing from time to time

Question

I am usign Eclipse PDT Helios and it sometimes freezes for 2-3 seconds even when working with small PHP files, like 10 rows without any includes in them or any complex statement that may cause a problem while parsing. My machine has more than 3GB RAM and I have setup the HEAP size to 990MB. The CPU is Intel E7500 2.9Ghz.

What could be the problem? It is annoying to work like that. I understand when it "thinks" for few seconds when opening large files like > 50KB but how about the small ones. It also freezes when I am making a change or I save the file. This is slowing the development process. I can have a freeze every min or 2 :(

Not sure if this is the right forum, but this is a programming problem connected with the IDE so I guess people here will not mind helping me if they can.

I am using Eclipse for PHP development with Subclipse installed and my working copies are on a server in our local network.

My current eclipse.ini is

-startup
plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher_1.1.0.v20100507.jar
--launcher.library
plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.win32.win32.x86_1.1.1.R36x_v20100810
-product
org.eclipse.epp.package.php.product
--launcher.defaultAction
openFile
--launcher.XXMaxPermSize
512M
-showsplash
org.eclipse.platform
--launcher.XXMaxPermSize
512m
--launcher.defaultAction
openFile
-vmargs
-Dorg.eclipse.swt.internal.gtk.disablePrinting
-Dosgi.requiredJavaVersion=1.5
-Xms1024m
-Xmx1024m
-XX:PermSize=512m
-XX:MaxPermSize=512m


Accelerate

Did you try tweaking the eclipse.ini? Like this one? #142857 – Medovich

No I have not, but I am not sure what are the different settings for. – Accelerate

I have drop some of them in my INI but still have the problem. Let say that I add a style="" to some HTML DOM element. At the moment when I press the double quotes button the Eclipse start "thinking" which really makes me angry cause it happens all the time :( – Accelerate

Is it me or every one have problems editing big files with old type of coding PHP - mixture of PHP, HTML, CSS and JS? Any alternative IDEs that handle better such cases and support SVN as Eclipse? – Accelerate

Answer 1

I wrote an article on speeding up PDT indexing. It might help.

Redingote

Yes I have one problem with the setup and it is described from as "Some store their workspace on a network drive". But this is the only way I can work now at my job. How big could be the impact of using network drive for storing the workplace. And I know that everythin on that drive is ecrypted/decrypted instantly which slows the process even more. – Accelerate

Well, this could be a very serious set back and it is probably the reason for the slowness that you experience. I'm not sure there's a solution for that at the moment. – Redingote

I would only add, mount your db folder as tmpfs. You can do this in ~/.bashrc if using linux. – Prong

Answer 2

There are known issues with PDT 3.1 and eclipse 4.2 (juno).

https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=385272

This is the solution:

Open a different perspective (for example java, but not php) and restart eclipse. Afterwards you can savely switch back to php perspective. Eclipse will have no (pdt induced) performance issues.

Also mentioned here

Hepburn