Eclipse online access extremely slow--cannot complete updates or install new software

Question

I'm trying to set up an Ubuntu 10.10 image in VMWare to do some Android development (my machine actually runs Windows 7 64bit). I've downloaded Eclipse 3.6.1 and when I tried to install the Android Tools by going to Help -> Install New Software, Eclipse would just get stuck trying to download the software. Even after 20 minutes no progress had been made.

I tried to check if Eclipse had internet access by checking for updates, and this too is having problems. If I do Help -> Check for Updates, Eclipse will start to search and then take a very long time to do any progress. It took like 20 minutes to go from 12% complete to 25%, and then 30 minutes to go from 25% to 50%.

I installed the Java JDK just a few minutes before at full speed, so I know it's not something to do with my VMWare setup. Any idea as to what could be happening?

Madrigalist

The update check just finished. It turns out the progress was made because the reader was timing out. I'm not sure if this means Eclipse has no internet access? – Lett

Answer 1

You're right, Eclipse updating can be horribly slow, regardless of connection speed.

From what I can tell, this is because it checks a whole bunch of slow servers looking for updates every time you try and install something. You can disable this behaviour in the "Install New Software" dialog by unchecking the "Contact all update sites" option. I find that things go an awful lot faster then.

Frenchman

That's what it was. I disabled this and it found the Android Tools in an instant. You don't know how much time I wasted this evening waiting at a frozen progress bar. Thanks a bunch! – Madrigalist

Still doesn't help with the way Eclipse likes to download half a million tiny little files veeeeerrrrrryyyyy slooooooowwwwwllllyyyy for every package it installs, but it's a big help. Amazing, it's like they looked at Maven's download behaviour and thought "Hey, that's a GREAT idea!". (I love maven, but hate its inefficient lots-of-tiny-http-requests repo access model) – Martial

Also, if you actually need to do a software update (and need Eclipse to get in touch with all Software Sites) take a look at this : bit.ly/UInlSk. (Basically add -Declipse.p2.mirrors=false to eclipse.ini and restart Eclipse) – Treasure

Eclipse is the worst IDE I ever see. Hope there will be an IDE like xcode for Android development. – Premise

@Ashutosh Jindal YES. I propose your comment as an answer. – Grafting

What a difference. Now the question becomes, who wrote this junk and why haven't the Eclipse contributors addressed it? – Announcement

Another Eclipse mystery solved. Thanks for watching the Paranormal Activity, java edition. – Happy

"You can disable this behaviour in the "Install New Software" dialog by unchecking the "Contact all update sites" option" This really helps. Thanks – Hear

Answer 2

I had the very same issue recently, but finally I managed to figure out what is causing the extremely slow network connections in Eclipse. Actually the issue isn't the low bandwidth, but connection timeouts. The solution in my case was to disable all unnecessary network adapters in Windows like Hamachi's and TeamViewer's adapter.

Trish

Answer 3

Another solution that worked really fast in my case:

• Do the normal procedure for new software install and wait for getting the "timeout" error message.

• In the timeout error message window you can see the URLs of the packages you had requested to download: copy-paste the URLs and download these packages manually (in my case was always very fast) and place them in the eclipse's /plugins directory.

• (Restart eclipse?) then relaunch the normal new software install procedure exactly like before (do it from the workbench window). Then this time in my case it installed the packages in just a few seconds maybe I am missing out the real cause why this solution makes things better but well it worked.

Mako

Answer 4

This is a constant nag through all the versions. In my case there are "zombie" entries in the sites which confuse the update manager.

Like:

After removing those with empty "name" column (which shouldn't happen normally), updates work flawlessly.

Imprecation