Horrible eclipse performance on macbook pro running 10.5.8

Question

I am using eclipse galileo on my macbook pro. After a few minutes it starts dragging really badly, like it takes 8 seconds to open a file. I don't have many files open at all. I already modified the config file to increase ram and all that stuff. Is there something wrong with this version of eclipse, never had it run so poorly on here,

Thanks

Answer 1

I'm with OS X 10.5.8 and my Eclipse runs great. Start by looking at the heap (Preferences -> General -> Show Heap Status). Next, check the Error Log for errors in your Eclipse platform (Window -> Show View -> Error Log).

This could be a problem with one of your plugins or with the workspace. I would try downloading a clean Eclipse install (you can have as many as you need) and starting a new Workspace. Try importing your projects (do not copy the settings). See if it works better for you.

Make sure you get the Cocoa version.

Answer 2

After looking at this SO question, I would recommend:

• using an optimized eclipse ini (like this one)
• replacing in that eclipse.ini -Dosgi.requiredJavaVersion=1.5 by -Dosgi.requiredJavaVersion=1.6 (see this SO question)
• use 64-bit Cocoa andand add to the JVM switches (still in the eclipse.ini) for running in 64 bit on Snow Leopard:

    -XX:+UseParallelGC
    -XX:+UseCompressedOops

(The last point would apply for Snow Leopard -- 10.6.x -- and not Leopard -- 10.6.5 -- as mentioned by zvikico, so read his blog post on the topic (and upvote his answer in this thread ;) )