Wednesday 18 June 2014

Eclipse Kepler - Network Connection - Socks Proxy Bypass Issue

In this post, I am going to describe about how to overcome one of the Eclipse Kepler issue that bogged me for few days before identifying it.

Before getting into issue, I would like to cover some basic information related to 'Network Connections' preferences of Eclipse.

Most of the Eclipse users would have set the proxy in the 'Network Connections' preference settings during their course of work. For long time, I had a question of what is its significance and what does the options 'native', 'direct' and 'manual' means.

As far as its significance is concerned, during plugin installation and updates - Eclipse would directly contact the internet and download the updates. If you are sitting behind proxy, then Eclipse would not be able to successfully connect to internet and would be hanging whenever we attempt to make the connection.

To address this, we are required to mention the proxy details in the 'Network Connections' preferences of Eclipse. Eclipse provides us with 3 options here:

a. Direct - Makes the connection directly without the aid of any proxies. If you are connecting to internet only through proxy, then this option would not help you and you need to change it to either native or manual.
b. Native - Makes the connection using the proxy set at the OS level. With this option, eclipse fetches the proxy details that you would have set from your browsers (Tools --> Intenet Option --> Connections --> LAN Settings) and uses it.
c. Manual - Makes the connection with user provided proxy details. As far as 'Manual' option is concerned, we can set the proxy value for the protocols 'http', 'https' and 'socks' in it.

Coming back to the issue that bogged me, whenever we set the proxy values for the above mentioned 3 protocols - looks like, Eclipse Kepler would ignore http and https protocol and tries to establish the internet connection only using 'socks' protocol.

If your update site does not support communication using 'socks' protocol, then Eclipse could not make connection and it would hang indefinitely.

Fortunately, people have found this bug and identified the work around for it. Work around is simple just clear the proxy details under 'socks' and proceed. It worked for me and helped me resolve the issue!!

You can refer this blog for more details: http://oakgreen.blogspot.jp/2011/10/eclipse-proxy-settings-bug-and.html 

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