How do I prevent Eclipse from hanging on startup?

Question

I am using Eclipse 3.3 (\"Europa\"). Periodically, Eclipse takes an inordinately long time (perhaps forever) to start up. The only thing I can see in the Eclipse log is:

Answer 1

It can also be caused by this bug, if you're having Eclipse 4.5/4.6, an Eclipse Xtext plugin version older than v2.9.0, and a particular workspace configuration.

The workaround would be to create a new workspace and import the existing projects.