Cannot start Eclipse Juno - eclipse

Question

I am getting very frustrated with this problem with Eclipse. I have had it many times, and quite frankly I think Eclipse is garbage. But since I do all of my Android development there, there are no other alternative IDE's. Here is my problem: I cannot start Eclipse. I changed absolutely nothing, and all of a sudden the .log file in .metadata throws the following stack trace error:
!ENTRY org.eclipse.osgi 4 0 2012-11-16 15:07:22.032
!MESSAGE Application error
!STACK 1
java.lang.NullPointerException
at org.eclipse.e4.ui.internal.workbench.E4Workbench.processHierarchy(E4Workbench.java:172)
at org.eclipse.e4.ui.internal.workbench.E4Workbench.init(E4Workbench.java:118)
at org.eclipse.e4.ui.internal.workbench.E4Workbench.<init>(E4Workbench.java:69)
at org.eclipse.e4.ui.internal.workbench.swt.E4Application.createE4Workbench(E4Application.java:302)
at org.eclipse.ui.internal.Workbench$5.run(Workbench.java:557)
at org.eclipse.core.databinding.observable.Realm.runWithDefault(Realm.java:332)
at org.eclipse.ui.internal.Workbench.createAndRunWorkbench(Workbench.java:543)
at org.eclipse.ui.PlatformUI.createAndRunWorkbench(PlatformUI.java:149)
at org.eclipse.ui.internal.ide.application.IDEApplication.start(IDEApplication.java:124)
at org.eclipse.equinox.internal.app.EclipseAppHandle.run(EclipseAppHandle.java:196)
at org.eclipse.core.runtime.internal.adaptor.EclipseAppLauncher.runApplication(EclipseAppLauncher.java:110)
at org.eclipse.core.runtime.internal.adaptor.EclipseAppLauncher.start(EclipseAppLauncher.java:79)
at org.eclipse.core.runtime.adaptor.EclipseStarter.run(EclipseStarter.java:353)
at org.eclipse.core.runtime.adaptor.EclipseStarter.run(EclipseStarter.java:180)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source)
at org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.Main.invokeFramework(Main.java:629)
at org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.Main.basicRun(Main.java:584)
at org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.Main.run(Main.java:1438)
at org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.Main.main(Main.java:1414)
I don't know what to do! I have no .snap file anywhere. What else can I try???
Thank you all for your help,
Igor

Answer 1

I occasionally have this issue as well, and it is indeed frustrating. What fixes it for me is to go into my eclipse workspace: <workspace>/.metadata/.plugins and start deleting stuff. Most of the things in here are auto-generated; settings etc. I think you can keep org.eclipse.core.resources (that's where a lot of your own user settings area).
Unfortunately, this makes the workspace forget what projects you were working on, so you have to re-add them, but for me this isn't a big deal because I store them elsewhere on my filesystem.
Hopefully this helps!