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Bug 409969

Summary:	Target Platform GC should run more often
Product:	[Eclipse Project] PDE	Reporter:	Andrew Niefer <aniefer>
Component:	UI	Assignee:	Curtis Windatt <curtis.windatt.public>
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED	QA Contact:
Severity:	normal
Priority:	P3	CC:	curtis.windatt.public, dj.houghton
Version:	4.3	Keywords:	helpwanted
Target Milestone:	4.4 M3
Hardware:	PC
OS:	Windows 7
Whiteboard:

Description Andrew Niefer

2013-06-05 10:40:23 EDT

TargetPlatformPreferencePage.runGC is called only when a target has been removed from the preferences.  

My current Team's process for target platform is as follows:
- The releng build produces a new .target file for each build and delivers it to source control
- Team members accept the new .target file and then either reload the target from the preferences, or select "Set as Target Platform" in the target editor.

As time goes by, the target moves forward on the versions of bundles it contains, old versions remain in the target folder and GC is never called because team members don't normally need to remove targets.


As an example, a teammate has used the same workspace & targets for a relatively long time.  His .metadata\.plugins\org.eclipse.pde.core\.bundle_pool\plugins folder on disk was 5.9GB.  He manually triggered a GC by doing:
Preferences -> Target Plaform > Add.. > Start with empty definition > finish
Apply
Select New Target > Remove
OK

GC then ran, and when complete his bundle_pool was reduced to 695MB

Comment 1 Curtis Windatt

2013-06-05 10:59:09 EDT

Related to Bug 310972.  We need to check that GC is working correctly and make it happen more often.  Finding time for this in the last few releases has been difficult.  Will mark for consideration in 4.4.

Comment 2 Curtis Windatt

2013-09-25 14:29:35 EDT

http://git.eclipse.org/c/pde/eclipse.pde.ui.git/commit/?id=562d47136fa68be6b09d0bc5b2e4dbd2766d3bbf
Fixed in master, the GC will run whenever the load target job would run from the preference page.  This is more aggresive, as changing an existing target then reverting it later could require all the bundles to be redownloaded.  However, most likely users are updating their targets, in which case deleting the old content is beneficial.  I confirmed that the GC will not delete downloaded content as long as one target definition references it.