How can I speed up Eclipse Proposals? they are very slow

Question

I am using Eclipse for Java development. One thing that I like with IDE's are when they propose the method names that I'm typing, this improves my productivity and keeps me from misspellings.

E.g my class:

class User {
    private String name;
    private int id;
}

I want the proposals when typing my_user. (should propose name and id quickly)

But Eclipse is very slow on this IDE feature which is important for me. (Google is doing search suggestions faster over Internet than Eclipse do proposals in my local workspace). Is there any way I can speed the Eclipse proposals up?

I have tried to uncheck all proposals except the "Java Proposals" from:

Windows > Preferences > Java > Editor > Content Assist > Advanced

I have tried this on both Eclipse Galileo 3.5.2 and Eclipse Helios 3.6.2. Galieleo is sligthly faster than Helios but both are too slow to be very useful.

Torch

Answer 1

Under Windows > Preferences -> Java > Content Assist you can set an "auto activation delay" which should speed up the display of the completion window itself. It might not help against Eclipse being slow in figuring out its type knowledge etc.

Whacking

Thanks this was great! I changed the value from 500 to 0 now is it instant! – Torch

Answer 2

Delay determines the time Eclipse waits before displaying suggestions. If you have a powerful machine you can set it to 0, like you did. If it's inconvenient to show it all the time, it's useful to set it to a human-reasonable time: i.e. you stay without pressing keys for 0.5 seconds, and after that Eclipse starts finding suggestions.

Thorndike