What to do when Eclipse won’t start

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After I installed Eclipse on a new iMac, I used it for several days and everything seemed OK. Then, suddenly, it stopped launching. No bouncing icon in the dock, no splash screen, just no response whatsoever.

Other java apps were running fine. But Eclipse would not start up.

Why this happens

It appears that the hidden .metadata directory that Eclipse uses in each workspace to store plugin data and other information gets corrupted, and must be “cleaned” before things will work again. In the screenshot below it has been made visible, so you can see some of the many folders inside.

 

Fix by cleaning the workspace:

To fix the situation, run Eclipse from the command line with the -clean argument.

For Macs:

  1. In terminal:
    $ /Applications/eclipse/Eclipse.app/Contents/MacOS/eclipse -clean
  2. Wait for the splash screen to go away.
  3. Select a new workspace.

For Windows:

  1. At the command line, enter:
    [path to]\eclipse.exe -clean
  2. Wait for the splash screen to go away.
  3. Select a new workspace.