Flex Builder 2 corrupting Eclipse 3.2.1

Question

Flex Builder 2 has some issues with Eclipse 3.2.1. I was
working with the trial version, so maybe the full version does not
exhibit these same problems, but if that is the case, then it is
disappointing that adobe is trying to support two separate products
instead of trying to resolve issues.
The largest issue with the Flex Builder 2 plugin for eclipse
is that if you have a flex project in the same workspace as other
projects (like dynamic Java projects) the flex builder 2 will try
to incorporate those projects in to the flex project when you do a
build or a clean only on that specific flex project. As a result,
eclipse consumes enormous amounts of memory that even with 2 gigs
allocated to the heap, it runs in to out of memory exceptions
frequently and the stability of eclipse has degraded significantly
since I installed this product! The flex projects that I had loaded
were some of the examples dealing with SpringGraph so I would not
consider them as being large or complex. When there is a build
occuring on just a Flex Project, it SHOULD HAVE NO BUSINESS even
scanning other non-related projects regardless as to if they are in
the same workspace!!!
I am not too impressed with flex's interface with eclipse on
the memory, the instability it introduced to eclipse, or how
SpringGraph handles large graphs, so I did not pursue getting a
license for future development. I also felt that the asking price
for the Flex Builder 2 is steep for what you get and its maturity
level. As such, when the license expired, Adobe had the nerve to
disable core functionality within Eclipse!!! For example, it would
not allow a CSS document to be opened in the CSS Editor! It
Hijacked the basic Eclipse functionality!!!
I am very disappointed in how the Flex Builder 2 plugin for
Eclipse does not play friendly!
But at least it does allow itself to be disabled. I am
grateful for at least that level of accepted behavior.

Answer 1

Cluebcke, thanks for the reply!
I am using a compaq nx7010 laptop with 2 gigs ram, 60 gig hd,
eclipse is set to utilize a minimum of 512 megs and a maximum of
1540 megs for the heap space. Virtual memory is set to a max of
4092 megs. Fairly generous I would assume. I doubt it was a
configuration issue, but hey, I’m open to learning and the
best lessons are through mistakes! ;-)
Sorry, I was being a bit sarcastic when I mentioned that
perhaps the issues were related to the free trial version knowingly
perfectly well that in fact there is no difference between the two
products. But I guess I was also conceding a possible out for Flex
too. Hmm...
To clarify my comment about aggressively compiling against
other projects:
1) I had about 4 demos loaded in to a workspace (269 files,
82 folders, and 7.2 megs including my 1 test project as mentioned
in item 4)
2) I had about 7 large Java projects loaded in to the same
workspace
3) Total workspace size was about 22,000+ files and 1600+
megs, give or take a fair number either way.
4) I was making changes to a simple flex project based upon
a SpringGraph demo
5) I choose to manually build only the small flex project I
was working on so as to replace all the generated files. NOTE:
Might have been a clean, but only on that one flex project and NOT
the whole work space. It takes too long to rebuild all of my other
Java projects so that option has been unchecked for quite a while.
6) What I saw in the Eclipse progress window was a list of
files within my flex project getting reconstructed, and then it
started to scan through the other projects too. All of their names
and resources were flashed within that window.
7) When finished with the build of the ONE flex project, the
Java heap was basically gone. Starting a TomCat server would cause
an out of memory exception. Recall I have allocated 1.5 gigs for
the heap.
8) Checking the other Java projects and Flex projects, the
timestamps on the objects did not reflect that they were just
rebuilt. They were untouched. Proof that I did not perform a build
or a clean over the whole workspace.
I agree with you whole heartedly that unless I explicitly
select “build all” or “clean all” it should
not touch other projects in anyway. But it did.
As far as the issue with the CSS editor, I understand and
accept your point. Perhaps as a friendly suggestion, when the trial
expires, the plugin should uninstall itself. This may be very
doable, and still have the functionality of a reminder and
reactivation upon registration if Flex Builder actually had a
second plugin called something like "FlexBuilder Registration"
which would "intercept" attempts to edit and utilize the
FlexBuilder only functionality so an informative message could be
displayed. The benefit would be that normal functionality for
non-flex resources such as CSS would return to normal.
Anyway, as I stated before, I was not too impressed with
performance of large graphs. What I consider to be large would be
on the magnitude of 20,000 to 100,000+. It would need to display
just about all nodes, or at lease an abstract relationship of those
nodes rolled up to a higher level. I realize that SpringGraph is
not ideal for those situations to begin with, but I was exploring
the idea of writing other plugins to deal with other graphing
formats.
I guess to be fair to Flex in general, I should probably ask
a general question of how well does Flex deal with large data sets
that need to be resident and the manipulations of those data sets?
Thanks for your time,
Scott Tabar