[Development] Eclipse tricks and tips

Eclipse hands-on tips and tricks

Error handling

Eclipse is a well-known and widespread IDE known for its high extensibility via plugins. Also well suited for ROS-based development: colcon can generate project files for Eclipse. Unfortunately, errors happen during development with Eclipse, ranging from little nuisance to obscuring catastrophes.

Refreshing workspace hangs on (1%)

Workaround #1: go to the workspace folder, into the .metadata folder. Most likely, there is a .lock file there, which should be removed.

Workaround #2: start eclipse in a clean and persisted state, e.g. the following:

eclipse/cpp-2020-03/eclipse/eclipse -clean -clearPersistedState

Workaround #3: delete the .metadata folder. This should be a final workaround, as you have to import projects again.