[news.eclipse.platform] Re: Launching Eclipse without the eclipse binary

[Andrew Niefer <aniefer@xxxxxxxxxx>]

The binary does not do very much, it reads the eclipse.ini file for additional 
arguments, finds a java vm and starts it in a new process. It does set some 
additional arguments such as ws, os, and arch and the location of the launcher. 
 As well, it sets up shared memory for communication back from the Java process.

The Java process will later re-invoke the launcher executable to display the 
splash screen. And also to do a restart or switch workspace.

If you are looking to reduce your startup time, you won't save much by skipping 
the launcher.  It is "safe" to start using Java directly, though you will lose 
the restart functionality.

You'll find more savings by considering your plug-ins and when they are getting 
started.

-Andrew

Achille wrote:
> Greetings
> While trying to discover why eclipse was taking so long to load (1.5+
> minutes, I found something interesting: Eclipse loads just fine by
> simply $ java -jar startup.jar
>
> On top of that the startup time is aproximately ~7 seconds. Certain
> plugins seem to work fine (Vi/BIRT/MyEclipse)
> While the initial heap is fairly small, it should not be a problem to
> add extra params for that.
>
> Two questions:
> a) Is this safe? 
> b) what does the eclipse binary really do? Where are the docs for the
> binary?