1.2.3GA: Performance degrades while using

[cebarne2]

I hate submitting issues like this, because they are so hard to track down, both for the consumer and the plug-in developer. I hope that others will read this post and confirm that they too have performance issues so that we may be able to narrow the focus for Instantiations.

This has happened to me throughout all the versions of SWT Designer I have used (going back to 1.1 I think). Basically, as I use the Designer, and switch to source, then back to design, then to source... you know, typical usage, things just start slowing down. Not just the Design editor, but also the Source Editor becomes very sluggish (scrolling, code completion, etc).

Sometime closing the offending editor and reopening it speeds things-up again. But this morning, while giving a workshop on plug-in development, I had to close Eclipse entirely to regain the speed I needed. A little embarrassing.

I don't believe I am receving exceptions during this slowdown. It has all the symptoms of a memory leak.

But, who am I to tell Instantiations the cause? I just do the symptoms.

-WinXP
->2 GHz
-1GB RAM
-Eclipse 2.1.2
-SWT Designer 1.2.3GA

Please, others with this issue share your thoughts to help us find the cause.

Thanks

[Eric Clayberg]

This has happened to me throughout all the versions of SWT Designer I have used (going back to 1.1 I think). Basically, as I use the Designer, and switch to source, then back to design, then to source... you know, typical usage, things just start slowing down. Not just the Design editor, but also the Source Editor becomes very sluggish (scrolling, code completion, etc).

How do you have Eclipse configured to use memory (i.e., what are your startup settings)? The only thing that I can think of that would account for this kind of behavior would be that Eclipse is maxing out its available memory and starting to swap. This might be exacerbated by the Eclipse undo buffer. As of the 1.2.1 release, the Designer was integrated with the Eclipse undo facility. The more changes you make, the more data gets added to the undo stack. If your memory was already somewhat tight, this could eventually knock it over the edge into swapping.

[cebarne2]

I'll check the memory usage next time it happens. But, typically, when I have looked in the past, my javaw.exe process was using just shy of 200 MB, but having a GB total RAM, I always had memory to spare.

For instance, right now javaw.exe is using 130 MB, and I have >450MB of RAM available.

Can you advise on where to find the undo settings? Can it be altered to troubleshoot this issue?

I is important for us to narrow this down to the source, because if it is an Eclipse issue (rather than a single plug-in issue) we have a larger concern.

Thanks.

[Eric Clayberg]

I'll check the memory usage next time it happens. But, typically, when I have looked in the past, my javaw.exe process was using just shy of 200 MB, but having a GB total RAM, I always had memory to spare. For instance, right now javaw.exe is using 130 MB, and I have >450MB of RAM available.

The problem is that Eclipse will never use that extra RAM unless you configure it to do so at startup. That is why I was interested in your Eclipse memory setting (e.g., startup paramaters). If you haven't done so already, you should read the note on Improving Eclipse Memory Usage. If you have a GB of RAM to play with, try giving half of it to Eclipse to see if it makes any difference. Something like -vmargs -Xms128M -Xmx512M.

Can you advise on where to find the undo settings? Can it be altered to troubleshoot this issue?

We'll need to investigate further. I don't know whether the user can control the depth of the undo stack. We might be able to do it programatically though.

[cebarne2]

I have not used any memory-specific switches in the startup. I will try the one you suggested.

[raphael]

I have had the same problem, but I added the -Xmx switch on startup and I haven't noticed it since. I did get the GA release at about the same time, so that may have had something to do with it (though from your posts it looks like it doesn't).
I couldn't get the -Xms switch to work. javaw would just send an error and not load. Is this because of I have a particular version of javaw?

[cebarne2]

For what it is worth, my Windows shortcut target looks like:

"C:\Program Files\eclipse\eclipse.exe" -vmargs -Xms128M -Xmx512M

No errors on this end.

Java 1.4.x

[raphael]

I know what my problem was. While trying to get the -Xms argument working, that was the only argument I used. To use it you also need the -Xmx argument. With both it works fine.