Opened/closed projects in one workspace - how many is too many?

Question

Are there any performance (in load time or usability) drawbacks when having lots of projects in one Eclipse workspace?

What difference makes when I close project I'm not working on?

Do working sets have any benefits to performance. I know it helps a lot in organizing projects, but what when I'll have lots of working sets, each with lots of projects?

Answer 1

Having lots of open projects will slow down startup, refresh, and all the background tasks that rummage through source files looking for problems. Usability depends on whether you need all those projects open - whether it gets hard to find what you're after - nothing to provide a solid answer about.

Closing projects brings them down to virtually no cost at all.

Working sets don't benefit performance directly. They obviously will help when you reduce the scope of operations, like searching, by using them.

Answer 2

Closing projects you're not working on, also has the usability benefit of a better overview in the package Explorer.

Closed projects are automatically collapsed by Eclipse and the Icon (blue closed Folder) also has less Subicons like warnings, the little Maven "M" etc. That makes it less distracting by scanning over your projects and looking for the relevant ones.


To close projects you're not currently working on is definitely a good idea.
(Mainly because of the issues Ed mentioned in his answer)
If you definitely won't be needing the project anymore, you may as well remove it from your workspace. Gives you an even better overview ;-)