What's the recommended Eclipse CDT configuration for big C++ project (indexer takes forever)

Question

I\'m working on some legacy C++ code written using \"vi\" and \"emacs\" and I am trying to build an eclipse CDT setup to maintain it (on linux). The two main problems I\'ve

Answer 1

-Xss8g on eclipse.ini was also needed on Neon to prevent stack overflow.

Also consider ulimit -Sv unlimited.

Tested on Ubuntu 14.04.

Answer 2

Using the Project resource filters helped me a lot. I removed from the project tree folders which I didn't want either to modify or to submit to indexing.

To create a new filter just right click on the project and then open the Properties panel then reach Resource -> Resource Filters

http://help.eclipse.org/helios/index.jsp?topic=/org.eclipse.platform.doc.user/concepts/resourcefilters.htm

Sometimes if your project sources are too big (ex: about 5GB ) you need to use a filter otherwise the indexing process never end correctly.

Answer 3

General recommendation here is to provide more RAM for Eclipse. First, you will need to tweak your eclipse.ini configuration file as the default one is not suitable for big projects. Here is my eclipse.ini file:

-startup
plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher_1.2.0.v20110502.jar
--launcher.library
plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.win32.win32.x86_64_1.1.100.v20110502
-product
org.eclipse.epp.package.cpp.product
--launcher.defaultAction
openFile
--launcher.XXMaxPermSize
256M
-showsplash
org.eclipse.platform
--launcher.XXMaxPermSize
256m
--launcher.defaultAction
openFile
-vmargs
-Dosgi.requiredJavaVersion=1.5
-Xms512M 
-Xmx4096M 
-XX:PermSize=256M 
-XX:MaxPermSize=512M

Here I used -Xmx4096M to provide 4Gb of RAM.

To improve responsiveness you will also need to configure Indexer Cache limits. I recommend to increase all parameters by 2-3 times, depending on project size.