How to fix GC overhead limit exceeded in Eclipse

Eclipse will throw the below error when it runs out of memory. It normally occurs when performing memory-hungry operations on big projects such as building the project's workspace.

An internal error occurred during: "Building workspace".
GC overhead limit exceeded

Memory is allocated via Eclipse' configuration file which is executed during Eclipse' startup. It is located in its installation directory and named eclipse.ini. The default values are good enough for small projects, but night not suffice for the bigger ones.

Below is a sample 'eclipse.ini file;

-startup
plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher_1.5.300.v20190213-1655.jar
--launcher.library
plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.gtk.linux.x86_64_1.1.1000.v20190125-2016
-product
org.eclipse.epp.package.jee.product
-showsplash
org.eclipse.epp.package.common
--launcher.defaultAction
openFile
--launcher.defaultAction
openFile
--launcher.appendVmargs
-vmargs
-Dosgi.requiredJavaVersion=1.8
[email protected]/eclipse-workspace
-XX:+UseG1GC
-XX:+UseStringDeduplication
--add-modules=ALL-SYSTEM
-Dosgi.requiredJavaVersion=1.8
-Dosgi.dataAreaRequiresExplicitInit=true
-Xms256m
-Xmx1024m
--add-modules=ALL-SYSTEM

Fixing the problem means allocating more memory for Eclipse. This could be done by increasing the values these parameters in the configuration file where the numbers represent the amount of memory to be allocated in megabytes (MB):

-Xms256m
-Xmx1024m

There's no magic number for the memory allocation as it depends on how big is your project and how much memory your system have. You can start by probably doubling the amounts as in the below example and then go from there such as in below example:

-Xms512m
-Xmx2048m

The changes will take effect after Eclipse is restarted.