Some Eclipse Foundation services are deprecated, or will be soon. Please ensure you've read this important communication.

Bug 338975

Summary: [SWT OS X Cocoa] Eclipse causes WindowServer to consume memory
Product: [Eclipse Project] Platform Reporter: Greg Watson <g.watson>
Component: SWTAssignee: Silenio Quarti <Silenio_Quarti>
Status: RESOLVED FIXED QA Contact:
Severity: major    
Priority: P3 CC: adam, arossi, bhunt, d.nachev, eclipse.felipe, francisu, greensopinion, johannes_rieken, john.arthorne, joshua.lester, lshanmug, mark.k.mclaren, markus.oley, mat.gessel+eclipse, Mike_Wilson, peter.misak, peter, prakash, pwebster, remy.suen, Silenio_Quarti, tiit
Version: 3.7Keywords: performance
Target Milestone: 3.7.2Flags: john.arthorne: pmc_approved+
eclipse.felipe: review+
Hardware: PC   
OS: Mac OS X   
Whiteboard:
Attachments:
Description Flags
Stack trace from eclipse crash none

Description Greg Watson CLA 2011-03-04 16:33:25 EST 
I've only started noticing this recently (possible 3.6 but definitely 3.7). I'm running the latest version of SL. I only use the 64bit Cocoa version, so I'm not sure if the 32 bit version has a similar issue.

During general Java development (refactoring, editing, building, etc.) the Mac OS X WindowServer memory usage increases until it consumes large amounts of real memory. Prior to launching Eclipse, it uses about 90MB. After an hour or so, it has consumed over 1GB of real memory at which point my system is pretty much unusable (I only have 3GB).

The Quartz Debug Window List shows in excess of 150 windows have been created by Eclipse. Most of these appear to be tooltip popups and context menus (some are just blank rectangles) that were displayed at some point. Since WindowServer is responsible for handling the interaction with the graphics hardware, it appears that the UI is creating Cocoa objects that are not getting released, or something similar.

Please let me know if there is any other debugging information I can provide.
Comment 1 Greg Watson CLA 2011-03-04 16:34:45 EST 
I forgot to mention that if I quit out of Eclipse, the WindowServer memory is released almost immediately, so there is very little doubt that Eclipse is responsible for the problem.
Comment 2 Prakash Rangaraj CLA 2011-03-07 05:20:36 EST 
Moving to SWT
Comment 3 Johannes Rieken CLA 2011-03-09 12:06:47 EST 
I see the same. After a bit of work (I'll restart eclipse every day) the WindowServer consumes huge amounts of memory (500-1000MB). Shutting down eclipse free the mem from the WindowServer.
Comment 4 Albert L. Rossi CLA 2011-04-07 12:21:40 EDT 
I have also noticed this issue on MacOS 10.5.8 cocoa (32-bit).  I also would tend to think this an SWT memory leak.
Comment 5 Peter Misak CLA 2012-01-27 05:47:40 EST 
I have started to notice this in 32-bit Eclipse version, where the dialogs started to look blank after a few hours of regular working. I have seen many OutOfMemory errors in the logs, 64-bit version simply lets the memory grow more, so the outcome is the same: I have to restart sometimes even a few times a day (WindowServer memory usage easily grows to 2GBs).
Comment 6 Greg Watson CLA 2012-01-27 17:03:40 EST 
Also occurs on Lion (10.7.2).
Comment 7 Greg Watson CLA 2012-01-27 17:04:15 EST 
And Elipse 4.2.
Comment 8 Silenio Quarti CLA 2012-02-01 12:56:06 EST 
Wow! This is a serious bug. Basically, every shell with the SWT.TOOL style bit is leaked. Thanks for the investigation.

Fixed
http://git.eclipse.org/c/platform/eclipse.platform.swt.git/commit/?id=3ef72dc42513515df553f500b077076464e6abd9
Comment 9 Silenio Quarti CLA 2012-02-01 12:58:53 EST 
*** Bug 356601 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 10 Silenio Quarti CLA 2012-02-01 13:04:19 EST 
Mike/John, we have to fix this in 3.7.2.
Comment 12 Silenio Quarti CLA 2012-02-01 15:11:45 EST 
*** Bug 343056 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 13 Silenio Quarti CLA 2012-02-07 10:38:35 EST 
Here are some steps to check the WindowServer memory:

1) Run the ActivityMonitor app
2) Select "All Processes" in the combo just before the search field
3) Select the Process with name: WindowServer

Every time a shell is created for any application, the column "Real Mem" should go up.  The memory needs to come down when the shells are disposed.

Note that the eclipse tooltips for the editor (JavaDoc, etc) are only disposed when the editor is closed.
Comment 14 Silenio Quarti CLA 2012-02-13 11:16:07 EST 
*** Bug 304857 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 15 Adam CLA 2012-02-27 21:06:20 EST 
Created attachment 211703 [details]
Stack trace from eclipse crash

I've updated Eclipse to have org.eclipse.swt 3.7.2.v3740f and now I'm no longer seeing the blank shell screens, but I've had eclipse completely crash on me several times.  Here's one of the error stack traces that were returned.  If this is helpful or you'd like other traces, let me know.  If I should create a new bug, I'm happy to do that too.
Comment 16 Silenio Quarti CLA 2012-02-28 09:54:48 EST 
(In reply to comment #15)
> Created attachment 211703 [details]
> Stack trace from eclipse crash
> 
> I've updated Eclipse to have org.eclipse.swt 3.7.2.v3740f and now I'm no longer
> seeing the blank shell screens, but I've had eclipse completely crash on me
> several times.  Here's one of the error stack traces that were returned.  If
> this is helpful or you'd like other traces, let me know.  If I should create a
> new bug, I'm happy to do that too.

Please open a separate bug. This stack trace does not seem related with this bug.  In the new bug, add info like which version you were running before and what you are doing when the crash happens. From the stack it seems you are swiping the trackpad (right?).  Are all the stack traces the same? If not, attach them.
Comment 17 Greg Watson CLA 2012-03-09 17:28:13 EST 
Has this been fixed in 4.2?
Comment 18 Silenio Quarti CLA 2012-03-09 17:37:58 EST 
Yes, it is fixed in 3.7.2 | 3.8 | 4.2.
Comment 19 Lakshmi P Shanmugam CLA 2012-08-06 04:52:12 EDT 
*** Bug 360610 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***