Bug 9826 [Contributions] ActionContributionItem caches Images forever
ActionContributionItem has an image cache that caches images forever, and won't release them until the Display goes down. If an Action updates its Image, such as a background color or foreground color action, It's ImageDescriptor is constantly changing. ActionContributionItem$ImageCache creates an SWT Image for each descriptor. I verified this by constantly (a.k.a. programmatically) changing an actions ImageDescriptor, using only ImageData to build the descriptor. I quickly got a "no more handles" crash.
bundles/org.eclipse.jface/src/org/eclipse/jface/action/ActionContributionItem.java
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 * Copyright (c) 2000, 2003 IBM Corporation and others.
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 * Contributors:
 *     IBM Corporation - initial API and implementation
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package org.eclipse.jface.action;