Something like 75% of the time I attempt to refresh from server on a project in the Force.com IDE it gets the data from the server but then hangs for 10 minutes or more on the "Saving components to project" dialog box. As this is a local operation I can't see any reason why it would be taking this long. I'm using the standalone IDE, but also had issues when using it as an eclipse plugin. OS X 10.8 (but also happened on 10.7) on a 4-month-old Macbook Pro.
Attribution to: ca_peterson
Possible Suggestion/Solution #1
Possibly not the answer you're looking for - but you might consider MavensMate as alternate to Eclipse on the Mac:
https://github.com/joeferraro/MavensMate
Attribution to: joshbirk
Possible Suggestion/Solution #2
I have had refreshes take a long time if I a. have selected a large number of components/types of components in the project and/or b. am pulling from an org with one or more installed packages. I've taken to start the refresh and go do something else, so I'm not sure where it hangs or exactly how long it takes. If you can't change a or b, I haven't found anything that increases the speed of the IDE.
Attribution to: Rob Scott
Possible Suggestion/Solution #3
When I hang on the IDE I usually just cancel and restart the operation (I get hangs a lot).
Doesn't seem like there is anything wrong, but if your not getting any response, you just need to try it again, even for large sets of APEX meta-data components it shouldn't take more than a minute or two.
And you should see some progress.
Also, maybe check and make sure you have the latest version of the IDE (Summer '12 as of today)
Attribution to: jordan.baucke
Possible Suggestion/Solution #4
I found the major reason it was so horribly slow: I have large managed packages installed and was right click > force.com > refresh from server on the project and not the src folder. This attempted to re-download the whole referenced packages bundle on every refresh which seems to be much less reliable in saving to project.
To get much improved results I now right click > force.com > refresh from server on the src folder under the project instead, which has dramatically increased performance.
Attribution to: ca_peterson
This content is remixed from stackoverflow or stackexchange. Please visit https://salesforce.stackexchange.com/questions/87