How can I reduce Eclipse Ganymede's memory use?

Question

I use the recent Ganymede release of Eclipse, specifically the distro for Java EE and web developers. I have installed a few additional plugins (e.g. Subclipse, Spring, Find

Answer 1

The Ganymede Java EE plugins are absolutely huge when running in memory. Also, I've had bad experiences with FindBugs and its reliability over a long coding session.

If you can't live without these plugins though, then your only recourse is to start closing projects. If you limit the number of open projects in your workspace, the compiler (and FindBugs) will have less to worry about and your memory usage will drop tremendously.

I usually split up my workspaces by customer and then only keep the bare-minimum projects open within each workspace. Note that if you have a particularly large projects (especially ones with a lot of files checked by WST), that will not only chew through your memory, but also cause a noticeable pause in responsiveness when compiling.