F5 refresh not always available/working in eclipse

Question

Usually if I want to refresh a project (or folder, Working Set, ...) in eclipse I just select the project and hit F5. Sometimes however nothing happens after hitting F5. When I then right-click the project I see in the context menu the option Refresh and not Refresh... (F5).

So for some reason the current state or such of the project does not allow F5 to refresh. I have this issue now in Indigo but this was already there in at least the 2 previous versions of eclipse.

Is this a bug or is there a (valid) reason why F5 is sometimes not available?

Answer 1

So for some reason the current state or such of the project does not allow F5 to refresh.

If you have a debugging session going (even if it is in the background and you are in a different perspective) the F5 is disabled for Refresh and mapped to "Step-Into".

Stopping the debug session will re-enable F5 for Refresh.

Answer 2

My guess would be that the F5 key is mapped to multiple actions, where "Refresh" has the lowest priority. You can see the mapping under Preferences > General > Keys

By default F5 is mapped to "Refresh" and "Step into" while debugging, there can be more mappings depending on which plugins you use.

But in another note:

Even if the context menu lists F5 as shortcuts, refreshing often doesn't work for me that way (especially when I have an 'out-of-sync' error from CVS). I got used to rightclick refresh my project as it always works...