Project Explorer crashes with out of memory

[David Poetzsch-Heffter]

When I start my eclipse it crashes with the following message:

'Project Explorer' has encountered a problem.
An internal error has occurred
Details>>:
An internal error has occurred.
Java heap space

Then I have the options to quit or to keep on working anyway. If I choose to keep on working there will be further errors stating that eclipse is OutOfMemory.

I checked my system monitor and it says that eclipse always needs about 360mb of RAM.

I tried to increase the memory using commandline arguments (eclipse -vmargs -Xms64m -Xmx1024m) or by changing the /etc/eclipse.ini. I also tried to increase the Perm-Memory, but none of these changes has any effect on the error or the RAM usage of eclipse.

I use Ubuntu 11.10 64bit with eclipse from the repositorys. My java version is:
java version "1.6.0_23"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (IcedTea6 1.11pre) (6b23~pre11-0ubuntu1.11.10)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 20.0-b11, mixed mode)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Daniel Pendolino (dpendolino)]

I'm not sure if this will work for you but I solved this issue by increasing the permanent generation memory via -vmargs -XX:MaxPermSize=<memory size>. So far upping the default 64 mb to 128 mb seems to do the trick. It may need another increase after I install plugns.

[David Poetzsch-Heffter (davidpoetzsch)]

I quote from my original bug description:
"I also tried to increase the Perm-Memory, but none of these changes has any effect on the error or the RAM usage of eclipse."

So no, this did not do the trick ;-)

[Nicholas Lee (nicholas-lee-n)]

I have freshly installed Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on a PC with 6GB of RAM.
 I then installed Eclipse Indigo and then the CDT addon.

 When I start the Eclipse-CDT IDE it immediately crashes with the following message:

 'Project Explorer' has encountered a problem
 An internal error has occured
 Java heap space

 Here is the log...

 java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space
 at org.eclipse.ui.part.ResourceTransfer.nativeToJava(ResourceTransfer.java:162)
 at org.eclipse.swt.dnd.Clipboard.getContents(Clipboard.java:323)
 at org.eclipse.swt.dnd.Clipboard.getContents(Clipboard.java:241)
 at org.eclipse.cdt.internal.ui.cview.PasteAction$1.run(PasteAction.java:174)
 at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Synchronizer.syncExec(Synchronizer.java:180)
 at org.eclipse.ui.internal.UISynchronizer.syncExec(UISynchronizer.java:150)
 at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Display.syncExec(Display.java:4330)
 at org.eclipse.cdt.internal.ui.cview.PasteAction.updateSelection(PasteAction.java:170)
 at org.eclipse.ui.actions.BaseSelectionListenerAction.selectionChangedBaseSelectionListenerAction.java:124)
 at org.eclipse.cdt.internal.ui.cview.RefactorActionGroup.updateActionBarsRefactorActionGroup.java:149)
 at org.eclipse.cdt.internal.ui.cview.MainActionGroup.updateActionBarsMainActionGroup.java:313)
 at org.eclipse.cdt.internal.ui.cview.CView.updateActionBars(CView.java:779)
 at org.eclipse.cdt.internal.ui.cview.CView.createPartControl(CView.java:554)
 at org.eclipse.ui.internal.ViewReference.createPartHelper(ViewReference.java:375)
 at org.eclipse.ui.internal.ViewReference.createPart(ViewReference.java:229)
 at org.eclipse.ui.internal.WorkbenchPartReference.getPartWorkbenchPartReference.java:595)
 at org.eclipse.ui.internal.Perspective.showView(Perspective.java:2245)
 at org.eclipse.ui.internal.WorkbenchPage.busyShowView(WorkbenchPage.java:1145)
 at org.eclipse.ui.internal.WorkbenchPage$20.run(WorkbenchPage.java:3921)
 at org.eclipse.swt.custom.BusyIndicator.showWhile(BusyIndicator.java:70)
 at org.eclipse.ui.internal.WorkbenchPage.showView(WorkbenchPage.java:3918)
 at org.eclipse.ui.handlers.ShowViewHandler.openView(ShowViewHandler.java:162)
 at org.eclipse.ui.handlers.ShowViewHandler.execute(ShowViewHandler.java:76)
 at org.eclipse.ui.internal.handlers.HandlerProxy.execute(HandlerProxy.java:293)
 at org.eclipse.core.commands.Command.executeWithChecks(Command.java:476)
 at org.eclipse.core.commands.ParameterizedCommand.executeWithChecksParameterizedCommand.java:508)
 at org.eclipse.ui.internal.handlers.HandlerService.executeCommandHandlerService.java:169)
 at org.eclipse.ui.internal.handlers.SlaveHandlerService.executeCommandSlaveHandlerService.java:241)
 at org.eclipse.ui.menus.CommandContributionItem.handleWidgetSelectionCommandContributionItem.java:829)
 at org.eclipse.ui.menus.CommandContributionItem.access$19CommandContributionItem.java:815)
 at org.eclipse.ui.menus.CommandContributionItem$5.handleEventCommandContributionItem.java:805)
 at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.EventTable.sendEvent(EventTable.java:84)

 Here is the session data...

 eclipse.buildId=I20110613-1736
 java.version=1.7.0_03
 java.vendor=Oracle Corporation
 BootLoader constants: OS=linux, ARCH=x86, WS=gtk, NL=en_GB...

[Dario Ferrarotti (d-ferrarotti)]

This is still an issue with Ubuntu Gnome 14.04, Java 1.8 and Eclipse Luna (4.4.1).

See attached log.

[Ádamo Príncipe (principe-adamo)]

Same Problem Here.

[James (jglossinger)]

Still an issue.

[James Nelson (ajaxian)]

This one is caused by a clipboard gnome extension.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/26540096/eclipse-java-lang-outofmemoryerror-java-heap-space

Disable the extension and the problem goes away.

[Andrey (iloveeclipse)]

The workaround for OOM is in Eclipse 4.5, see https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=205678