How to open a file in external editor programmatically in eclipse plugin development?

Eclipse IDE hangs quite often. Is this normal?

• I recently came to Java/Open source world from .NET world (12 years there). I know Visual Studio for a decade. Now, I've been using Eclipse IDE to program Java for seven weeks. I am just amazed how often it hangs, causing me to kill the app, and restart it (where re-loading sometimes takes like minutes). I just want to understand that this is just "the way open source IDE" is. You pay nothing but in exchange you pay by loosing productivity? By the way, I took the approach of "start minimal and add only those plugin I need". Yes, at first, I installed EE versions, I added JBoss Tools and several other common/popular plugins for subversion, checking style, etc.. It was REALLY REALLY slow to the point that it was just not usable as a development tool. So, I got "Classic" instead and hand-picked only those plug-ins that I need/care. (By the way Classic is dramatically faster than EE). I added Web tools platform to edit server codes. I didn't want Mylin stuff (maybe later, but not now) Still, Eclipse is hangs (or is VERY slow to do its job). For instance, I just copy-pasted some code into java editor, and it started spinning for like a couple minutes, so i killed it. It happens so often at various random situations. Yes, I did try increasing memory for JVM using eclipse.ini. I gave lots of memory for Permanent Gen. I think I've done most "best practices" to speed up Eclipse. I got a server machine with ridiculous amount of memory - 24GB I religiously defrag my drive, so there shouldn't be issue with the file I/O (besides, Visual Studio loads/works just fine on the same machine) Still, I killed/re-stared Eclipse like 3 times just today... Is this normal? Should I just accept it and live with it?

• Answer:

  Since Eclipse is in a transformation state, from the well known 3.8 to 4.x version, it is realy an issue i've recognized also during my daily work. I don't know whether it has smth. to do with this compatlayer, which is used to support 3.8 style plugins or not, but I hope they will transform the arhitecture faster.