How do I prevent Eclipse from hanging on startup?

Question

I am using Eclipse 3.3 (\"Europa\"). Periodically, Eclipse takes an inordinately long time (perhaps forever) to start up. The only thing I can see in the Eclipse log is:

Answer 1

On Mac OS X, you start Eclipse by double clicking the Eclipse application. If you need to pass arguments to Eclipse, you'll have to edit the eclipse.ini file inside the Eclipse application bundle: select the Eclipse application bundle icon while holding down the Control Key. This will present you with a popup menu. Select "Show Package Contents" in the popup menu. Locate eclipse.ini file in the Contents/MacOS sub-folder and open it with your favorite text editor to edit the command line options.

add: "-clean" and "-refresh" to the beginning of the file, for example:

-clean
-refresh
-startup
../../../plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher_1.3.0.v20130327-1440.jar
--launcher.library

Answer 2

I also had luck with removing the *.snap files. Mine were located in a different directory than mentioned in the posts (below).

<eclipse workspace>/.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.core.resources/.projects

Consequently, the following unix cmd did the trick:

find <eclipse_workspace>/.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.core.resources/.projects  -name "*.snap" -exec rm -f {} \;

Answer 3

I had a very similar problem with eclipse (Juno) on Fedora 18. In the middle of debugging an Android session, eclipse ended the debug session. I attempted to restart eclipse but it kept haning at the splash screen. I tried the various suggestions above with no success. Finally, I checked the adb service (android debug bridge):

# adb devices
List of devices attached 
XXXXXX offline

I know the android device was still connected but it reported it offline. I disconnected the device and shut down the adb service:

# adb kill-server

Then I waited a few seconds and re-started the adb service:

# adb start-server

And plugged my android back in. After that, eclipse started up just fine.

Answer 4

You can try to start Eclipse first with the -clean option.

On Windows you can add the -clean option to your shortcut for eclipse. On Linux you can simply add it when starting Eclipse from the command line.

Answer 5

I had a similar problem with a rather large workspace in 3.5 and no .snap-files anywhere to be seen. "Windows -> Preferences -> General -> Startup and Shutdown -> Refresh workspace on startup" seems to be a workspace-related setting and so I couldn't change it for the workspace that was causing the hang.

Running eclipse with the command line parameter -refresh and then changing the setting seems to do the trick.

Answer 6

Removing *.snap (mine is *.markers), --clean-data or move workspace folder seems all did not work for me.

As my eclipse stopped working after I installed and switched my keyborad input to HIME, I went back to fctix and it worked.