Description Nadeem Aboobaker 2011-08-19 15:00:14 EDT

Build Identifier: I20110613-1736

We recently switched from Eclipse 3.6.2 to Eclipse 3.7 and as a result had to change the way we referenced library jar files in our plugins.


We used to do this in the plugin.xml:

<runtime>
<library name="../../somefolder/somejar.jar"><export name="*"/></library>
...
<library name="../anotherfolder/anotherjar.jar"><export name="*"/></library>
</runtime>

It turns out that the "feature" of being able to refer to jar files outside of a plugin was fixed in Bug 342114. So, we changed the way our library jar files get referenced.


Now we use MANIFEST.MF and explicitly list every package in the jar files:

Bundle-Classpath: external:c:/somefolder/somejar.jar,
external:c:/folder/anotherfolder/anotherjar.jar
Export-Package: com.example.some.package,
com.example.another.package,
...
com.example.package


Now when we run the command line PDE build or the build in our development Eclipse, we get "OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space" errors even after significantly increasing our VM memory. We've gone from everything working fine at -Xmx512m to now running out of memory at -Xmx1024m. If increased much past that, then the Eclipse/VM doesn't launch on our 32 bit Windows due to the memory number being too high. I've tried -Xmx2048 on 64 bit Windows and Linux and still hit the out of memory error, but less frequently.

At least for the command line build problem, I believe it's an issue with the large Export-Package list in MANIFEST.MF.  If I remove all 10,000 entries from Export-Package, the command line build works perfectly fine.  I need to add the Export-Package list back to the MANIFEST.MF to get things working at runtime.  My current workaround at buildtime to build the plugins is to remove the Export-Package list at build and then add it back afterwards.

I have no workaround during dev time, except to use my 64 bit OS and keep re-launching my dev Eclipse until it's the one time I don't run into the issue.

Just a few notes:
- It's not a matter of a few jars and a few exported packages, it's 500+ jar files and 10,000 packages. I understand that's a very high number, but it worked when using plugin.xml and export *.
- The PDE still builds correctly when using the old plugin.xml way of referring the external jars and * to export the packages, but the runtime does not work (leads to class not found problems).
- There are no problems at runtime with using the new MANIFEST.MF approach. Eclipse uses the same memory VM settings as before and things work just as before.


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Have plugin.xml reference hundreds of jar files and export *
2. Convert plugin.xml jar file references to MANIFEST.MF Bundle-Classpath entries and explicitly list all 10,000 packages in Export-Package.
3. Run build on command line or in UI, see OutOfMemory error.