[Solved]-Fail to launch application (CreateProcess error=87), can't use shorten classpath workaround-eclipse

I encountered the same problem. Trying to run a scrapbook page would not succeed, whatever I tried. I checked the contents of my .plugins direcotry in the workspace. I noticed a lot of index files in de org.eclipse.jdt.core directory. I renamed this directory and now a scrapbook process can be run again.

One solution I have for Eclipse, is to close certain projects that are enabled through Workspace Resolution, and instead have these be resolved from your local Maven repository. It worked for me anyways

I have faced the same issue, project refereed un-build jar files. Suppose tools-1.6.jar is builded and added as dependency. Later there might be changed the source code for tools-1.6.jar and not performed #mvn clean install.

I have done clean build and updated maven dependency, error was resolved.

Use a dynamic link which can be easily created with juncion (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896768). Create the link for your project and add it to eclipse through that. usage e.g.: md d:\shortname junction d:\shortname\ d:\my\very\long\long\long\long\long\long\projectnamefolder

This is a known bug in Eclipse: Bug 327193 - [patch] Launching command line exceeds the process creation command limit on Windows

It will be fixed with Eclipse e4 4.3 released in 2013. It wasn't deemed important enough to fix in 3.4.2. But in the attachments to the bug, you can find a couple of replacement classes to fix your version of Eclipse.

Since I had the same problem with Eclipse Helios (the only version officially supported by our department) and I had a great difficulty solving the problem, here is the solution:

Install the latest Eclipse (in my case 4.3.2 did the work).

This issue had been reported as an Eclipse Bug: https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=327193 and it is now fixed.

Hope this helps future users that will reach this page.

I was dealing with the same problem on Eclipse, so, for that reason I decided to give a try to the same project on Intellij, just to know if it was a IDE problem.

Surprisingly, Intellij detects this problem (long classpath) and shows me a dialog, recommending me to use dynamic classpath feature. After enable this option, the problem gone.

What dynamic.classpath flag does is: What does the dynamic.classpath flag do? (IntelliJ project settings)

So, now my question is: Is there a way to do the same on Eclipse? seems to be a simple and elegant solution to this problems, instead of removing manually all those dependencies that are not necessary.

This is definitely an issue with the classpath being too long causing the command line to exceed it's maximum limit. to resolve, shorten your classpath. If you are using Maven (like I was - e.g. in Jive development ) then change the location of your .m2 by changing the maven settings.xml

<settings>
  <localRepository>c:/.m2/repository</localRepository>
</settings>

and then move your repository there from the user directory, but ensure that the settings.xml and settings-security.xml (if applicable) are still in the User directory. This way the class path will no longer show c:\Documents and Settings\username.m2 over and over but rather c:.m2 allowing a significant decrease in classpath and thus command length. Remember that in windows you cannot create a directory (by yourself) with name .m2, and so you have to cut the directory, paste in in c: and then copy it back into your user folder

As a workaround:

1. Open your eclipse run configuration for the task that is failing.
2. Choose the classpath tab, select the default classpath, click the "Edit.." button
3. Check the "Only include exported entries" checkbox.

This allowed me to get around this problem on Eclipse 3.6 (Helios)