Maven plugin for Eclipse size

Question

I have Maven plugin in Eclipse. I do Java projects development with Eclipse. I found that one plugin file size is huge - 3Gb .

File name and location:

workspace_directory\.metadata\.plugins\org.eclipse.m2e.core\nexus\05b0fe8524860bd73cbb07ef30fb34cc\_9c.cfs

And directory workspace_directory\\.metadata\\.plugins\\org.eclipse.m2e.core\\nexus content is:

11/23/2018  09:49 AM    <DIR>          05b0fe8524860bd73cbb07ef30fb34cc
11/03/2018  06:33 PM    <DIR>          1196236751ff9f8068c4e493852137d9
11/23/2018  09:49 AM    <DIR>          577c9a072a5be72b188eca2cbe5cdd24
11/23/2018  09:49 AM    <DIR>          830bc118332e77292949ed1e6d2fabe0

is it normal that _9c.cfs file is so big? Can I delete it?

Answer 1

This is the Maven Repository index, used for suggesting Dependencies and Plugins when you're adding some to your project. And yes, it's quite normal to be this big, Maven Central contains a lot of content.

You can delete the file, but it will be downloaded again unless you disable the indexing:

You can also micromanage the indexes for your various repositories if you go to Window -> Show View -> Other... -> Maven -> Maven Repositories , and right-click any of your repos:

Answer 2

I'm not a fan of Eclipse at all so I'm not using it and don't know it that much. However I believe this is your local Maven repository. It's size is absolutely normal, my local repo is similar in size. Deleting it doesn't hurt but also is quite pointless because it will synchronize again when you run your IDE (at least be default) what will take quite a while and you may end up waiting for it to finish to be able to compile your project. You cannot avoid local repo, it is required but you may try to remove all the stuff you don't use to make it smaller. It's up to you but that's a kind of a tilting with windmills, you cannot win it. If you're out of space and cannot keep whole repo locally switch to different builder which do not require it, like Ant but then you will swap one problem to another eventually.