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

Question

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!

Answer 1

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.