Eclipse hangs for 3-4 seconds before displaying a

Question

I've searched the Internet like crazy, however "WTP freeze" or "Eclipse freeze" yields so many different results that it's virtually impossible to find the right one. I have the following issue.

In a HTML or CSS editor when I accidentally hover my mouse over an attribute value, Eclipse hangs for 3-4 seconds with CPU at 100% load before producing a tooltip message with some info on the tag and its attribute. I don't need those tips. Hell, I don't even need syntax coloring if that would prevent me from this hang.

I tried disabling all the autocomplete features, everything that seemed related, however that didn't change a bit. I looked for a setting to disable WTP completely without uninstalling it, however again - no luck.

I use Eclipse Helios. I have all the latest plugins. I'll supply any additional info, if that is needed.

Has anybody had a similar issue and was able to resolve it? This is really driving me crazy.

BOUNTY

The bounty will go to anyone who finds a way or a workaround that will make pop-up windows reasonably fast. I've had this issue in Eclipse in numerous places - like PyDev for example:

Eclipse PyDev completion hangs (yet again)

I have a strong programistic feeling that this is a general issue with pop ups and not so much with WTP/PyDev. Here are measures that I've already taken:

• Installed the latest Eclipse from scratch
• Installed the two problematic plugins on this clean installation (WTP/PyDev)
• Made sure that Eclipse has more than enough memory
• Made sure the appropriate JVM is chosen

My setup is Ubuntu Natty, Oracle Java 1.6 - latest version in the repos

Further findings

Ok, I've just found out that 99% of the time of the freeze is spent inside a call to org.eclipse.swt.internal.gtk.OS._gtk_widget_realize which doesn't seem right. Any clues?

I'd encourage everyone who has experienced this issue to vote for this bug on the Eclipse bug tracker.

Answer 1

I had a similar issue where Eclipse would hang on tooltips for several seconds, and oftentimes crash. It got to the point where it would just plain crash even if I didn't do anyhting. Uninstalling it and reinstalling it got rid of the problem, though, so I suggest giving that a try if you haven't already.

Answer 2

You could try switching off all the Validators: Window > Preferences > Validation > Suspend all validators.

Another option is Window > Preferences > Java > Editor > Hovers, turn off 'Combined Hover'.

Answer 3

Wow, finally nailed it, thanks to one of the suggestions.

Hover messages can be disabled under Window > Preferences > General > Editors > Structured Text Editors > Hovers tab > Combined Hover.

Eclipse can be a labyrinth sometimes.

Answer 4

How is your memory profile? Do you have more than enough?

We have run into many problems with Eclipse and wierd issues as we approached our memory limits. The current prevailing thought is that the swapping causes problems due to timing issues.

Answer 5

The selected answer didn't work for me in Eclipse (Kepler) with PyDev.

For me the following worked best:

Show Docstrings should be disabled in preferences under Pydev/Editor/Hover.

Answer 6

This looks to be a gtk specific issue. In addition to the bug you mentioned there are other bugs opened as well e.g. https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=345093.