eclipse hangs when run application (application runs fine, eclipse is what hangs)

Question

I have a single application which will cause eclipse itself to hang when run via eclipse. If I export this application as a jar and run it it works fine. But if I run (or debug) it the application will appear to start (according to ps) and run; but eclipse itself will hang, and is reported as a 'stopped' program with no CPU or memory usage. I've placed a breakpoints on the first line of this application and it doesn't even get there before eclipse ends up stopped. If I forcefully wake eclipse out of stopped state it will work; but it will also lose it's connection with the program I started. My program I want to debug will continue running but eclipse can't control or kill it after I resume the stopped eclipse.

I can run plenty of other applications without issue from eclipse. Oddly I had this issue before, then I could run my application for a day, and now I'm back to the original issue. I don't know what changed between those that would matter.

Can anyone suggest what may cause this or how to repair it?

UPDATE:

I did some more linux magic. It seems that eclipse is stopped while waiting for the command: sh -c stty -lcanon min 1

It also seems that before that there was a sh (defunct) command which also hung without being reaped for a few minutes which I think was keeping eclipse from running properly; the sh (defunct) finally goes away if I wait long enough; but then the sh command I just linked comes up. I don't know what the original defunct SH command was; I can't do ps fast enough to catch it before it goes defunct. Both issues occur only with eclipse; as a jar file this program runs perfectly fine.

My running assumption is that eclipse isn't getting or handling the sigchild correctly? that would explain the sh (defunct) application at least. It doesn't explain the current SH command which doesn't show as defunct; despite it being something that should execute in seconds?

UPDATE 2.0:

I found this link: http://linux.about.com/od/srl_howto/a/hwtsrl13t04_3.htm basically stty is known to hang when it uses the < /dev/tty syntax; which is why the syntax is deprecated and replaced with a newer syntax. I'm pretty sure this is the problem. Sadly I have no way of figuring out what library is using the deprecated command. I think this all started with the ConsoleReader being constructed; but who knows what code actually ran the command that freezes? also, it seems if this was that broken anyone running consoleReader from eclipse on a linux environment would have the same problem; which I think is safe to assume isn't the case or it would be documented all over the net; so maybe my understanding is still off?

Answer 1

The problem was that we were using an older version of 'jline' which used deprecated functionality. The new jline jar fixed the problem, as it no longer used the deprecated stty calls. I'm not quite certain why eclipse caused this to happen every time; it seems as if it should be an intermittent error, but jline was definitely the cause.

Answer 2

It is related to the configuration of the stty process that is created to attach the console and hence will occur only on UNIX like systems. Seems fixed on current 2.11 jline version.

To bypass the problem you can disable the special unix-terminal capabilities using:

-Djline.terminal=none

as VM argument on the eclipse launch configuration.

Answer 3

Try increasing -Xms<abc>m/-Xmx<efg>m (depending on the system memory) on eclipse.ini in the root directory of eclipse installation.