Getting a lightweight installation of Java Eclipse

Question

Having dealt with yet another stupid eclipse problem, I want to try to get the lightest, most minimal Eclipse installation as possible.

To be clear, I use eclipse for tw

Answer 1

A bit late to this party, but I asked myself the same question for a while, and while now I'm back to a more fully-fledged Eclipse installation, I used to to the following to streamline it a bit. Hope it helps.

What I Needed

Functionalities:

• Java Support
• Java + Java EE (XML) + Debug Perspectives

Pretty much it. There's a lot of other things I like to use in Eclipse, but I needed to keep it down to the skinniest possible because I was in a 3GB environment where I also needed to run other servers in parallel, so I couldn't afford much.

Resulting Perspectives:

• Lightweight Java
• Lightweight Browser (fairly tweaked for code reviews and code inspection - that one was actually heavier than the others)
• Lightweight Debug

What I Did

• Install Eclipse Java EE (install classic if not caring about the Java EE/XML bits)
• disable hungry views
  • disable outline (when you need one, just do CTRL+O)
  • disable call and type hierarchies
• disable decorators
• disable menu entries (right-
• disable toolbar items
  • even better: hide the toolbar
• disable hovers and actions associated with that
• disable spell-checking
• disable XML validation
• disable Mylyn
• disable non-needed search forms in CTRL+H dialog (I usually actually only use the "File Search" mode, sometimes the "Java" one)
• disable usage reporting
• disable unnecessary plugins or features
• disables perspectives and plugins loaded automatically on startup
• restrict internal limits:
  • some views have a scope (enclosing class, project, working set, workspace...)
  • some views and UI elements have boundaries (console/loggers, highlighters, markers...)
• tweak the eclipse.ini to:
  • -clean the workspace (slower, but I tend to prefer to do that)
  • use G1GC
  • reduce memory usage (I noticed that I can perfectly live with -xss128k and -xmx384 with G1, for instance. YMMV, of course, as always with JVM tuning.)
  • use a server VM (and point directly to the VM's DLL)

Also disable views you don't need in the "Debug" and "Code Browsing" perspectives.

Sorry, I had actually saved all of these as a set of 3 lightweight perspectives to re-import everytime on my new project, but I cannot get my hands on them at the moment. If I ever find then, I'll add a link to them here.