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Bug 120703

Summary: [ErrorHandling] Eclipse won't start after it crashed opening a large file
Product: [Eclipse Project] Platform Reporter: Alain ésilets <alain.desilets>
Component: UIAssignee: Kim Horne <eclipse>
Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE QA Contact:
Severity: major    
Priority: P3 CC: ed.burnette, Tod_Creasey
Version: 3.2   
Target Milestone: ---   
Hardware: PC   
OS: Windows XP   
Whiteboard:

Description Alain ésilets CLA 2005-12-13 15:14:33 EST 
First of all, I should mention that I Specified 3.2 M6 as the version I have, but I have no way of telling because the bug I am reporting is preventing me starting Eclipse.

I tried to open a humonguous text file with Eclipse, and it crashed because it ran out of memory.

Now, everytime I try to start Eclipse, it crashes because it runs out of memory.

I suspect it's because Eclipse remembers that the huge file was opened before it crashed the first time, so it tries to open it upon startup.

Eclipse should really be robust to this sort of thing. As it stands now, it seems I have no other option than to reinstall Eclipse from scratch.

Unless, is there a way I can tell Eclipse to forget the list of opened files?
Comment 1 Ed Burnette CLA 2005-12-16 23:44:20 EST 
See also http://www.eclipsezone.com/eclipse/forums/t59526.html
Comment 2 Alex Blewitt CLA 2005-12-17 05:18:56 EST 
It seems to me that the workbench shouldn't crash out opening a bad file upon startup. If the file can't be opened, it should be handled and the entry removed from the workbench list so that the problem doesn't occur repeatedly on startup ...
Comment 3 Mike Wilson CLA 2006-04-25 11:28:27 EDT 
This is a duplicate of bug 109528, which explains some of the issues better. We absolutely need to fix this, but will not be able to do so for R3.2. It's high on my list of items for us to do as soon as R3.2 ships, however.

In the interim, if you get in this state, you can delete the file "<yourworkspace>\.metadata\.plugins\org.eclipse.ui.workbench\workbench.xml", which will reset the workbench state.

Downgrading the severity, since there is an (admittedly ugly) workaround.

Note: See also bug 117746, which talks about controlling attempts to open extremely large files *before* an OOM is generated.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 109528 ***