How to control Eclipse's memory usage

[Anthony Smith]

Eclipse is a memory beast. How can I control it?

[Jeroen Wenting]

IBM, which, as everyone knows, stands for Insert Bigger Memory

I have noticed that having less projects and smaller projects opened decreases memory use, as does having less files open.
Of course doing so also slows you down...

[Carlos Valcarcel]

Originally posted by Anthony Smith:
Eclipse is a memory beast. How can I control it?

Like most Java programs, once it starts consuming memory it refuses to give it back (that is actually a JVM issue, not really an app issue).

I have 1G on my notebook and always make sure that I shutdown Eclipse at least once a day. Not having a Unix box I don't know what the memory behavior is on Linux or Solaris.

Something you can do is check that you only preload just the plug-ins you need (which should not be many) at startup. Open Window->Preferences->Workbench->Startup and Shutdown to make sure that the plug-ins you have loaded have not hijacked Eclipse behind your back.

I only have the following 3 plug-in load at startup:
Automatic Updates Scheduler
Internet Preferences
Content Properties

Carlos

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Anthony,
You can also pass a parameter to Eclipse to tell it how much memory to use. However, this causes the IDE itself to perform poorly. So use with caution:

"C:\Program Files\eclipse3-1\eclipse.exe" -vmargs -Xmx256M