Why does Eclipse maven produce huge .cfs files for no reason?

29
votes

I suddenly found that the plugins folder of my Eclipse workspace was huge, and I discovered the following files:

  • ...\EclipseWorkspace\.metadata\.plugins\org.eclipse.m2e.core\nexus\d5024e88244f4087c1f73b4a8fae2df4_i.cfs ~200MB
  • E:\.m2\repository\.cache\m2e\1.0.100\d9d714e11cb097b3ffcec91cccc65d3e\min_n.cfs and also _r.cfs ~200MB each

Before finding these huge files I didn't even know what Maven was, I didn't choose to install it (must have come with Indigo upgrade) and I haven't ever used it or told it to index or cache anything.

I have seen this question and googled extensively, but can't work out why maven or nexus is even doing anything!

Could someone please explain to me why it creates these files in the first place, especially without me even using it or telling/allowing it to?

Thanks in advance!

1
eclipsemaveneclipse-pluginnexusm2e
Do you have any projects that use maven to control their build process? Perhaps open source projects that you've grabbed the source for? – chrisbunney
Not as far as I know, I didn't even know what Maven was before I discovered these, and all my projects in my workspace are ones that I created from scratch. The only things I have changed are installing plugins PyDev, ProDT and ML-Dev, whilst messing around with Python, Prolog and ML. – sparrowt
<stackoverflow.com/a/6732819/874076> best answers this. – Kilokahn
This answers the general question for which thank you, however it does not explain why they're there in a workspace where I have not got any projects using maven at all. – sparrowt

1 Answers

5
votes

I just have the same problem. I just did some test coding and found that 250MB are stored in a file

...eclipse-workspace.metadata.plugins\org.eclipse.m2e.core\nexus\d9d714e11cb097b3ffcec91cccc65d3e_j.cfs

i found this:

http://dev.eclipse.org/mhonarc/lists/m2e-users/msg01708.html

m2e caches lucene index in two places. Per-workspace indexes are stored under .metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.m2e.core/nexus and there is also global cache in ~/.m2/repository/.cache/m2e/${m2e.version}.

Try cleaning the caches and see if the problem goes away.

Well - but that doesn't still till what and why it is stored there.