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Ideal eclipse.ini file setup for your Eclipse Environment – Best Practice for MacOS and Windows

Updated on by App   10

Best Practice for Eclipse.ini file

As a Java Developer, we spend almost half of our time developing world class Java Applications. Your application might be touching thousands of users and making their lives easy in this very complex world 🙂

Here in this tutorial we will go over steps on how to speed up Eclipse performance by simply changing eclipse.ini file.

Ever wondered?

  • How can you speed up Eclipse?
  • FAQ How do I increase the heap size available to Eclipse?
  • Share your tweaked eclipse.ini with Profiles for Eclipse
  • Performance tuning parameters for Eclipse IDE
  • eclipse.ini vm arguments tuning

Why we need to modify default eclipse.ini file?

By default, Eclipse foundation ships very basic bare minimum eclipse.ini configuration file. Immediately after I download or upgrade to latest Eclipse.app, I usually update ini file by going to:

  • Right click on Eclipse.app icon
  • Click on Show Package Contents
  • Go to folder /Contents/Eclipse/
  • You will find eclipse.ini file
Eclipse.ini file settings - Crunchify Setup

Basically I modify below things in eclipse.ini file based on Java 11 JDK configuration.

Mac Version of Eclipse’s eclipse.ini file

-startup
../Eclipse/plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher_1.6.0.v20200915-1508.jar
--launcher.library
../Eclipse/plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.cocoa.macosx.x86_64_1.2.0.v20200915-1442
-product
org.eclipse.epp.package.jee.product
-showsplash
org.eclipse.epp.package.common
--launcher.defaultAction
openFile
--launcher.defaultAction
openFile
--launcher.appendVmargs
-vmargs
-Xss128m
-Xmn1024m
-Declipse.p2.max.threads=10
-Doomph.update.url=http://download.eclipse.org/oomph/updates/milestone/latest
-Doomph.redirection.index.redirection=index:/->http://git.eclipse.org/c/oomph/org.eclipse.oomph.git/plain/setups/
-Dosgi.requiredJavaVersion=11
-Dosgi.instance.area.default=@user.home/eclipse-workspace
-Dsun.java.command=Eclipse
-XX:+UseG1GC
-XX:+UseStringDeduplication
--add-modules=ALL-SYSTEM
-XstartOnFirstThread
-Dorg.eclipse.swt.internal.carbon.smallFonts
-Dosgi.requiredJavaVersion=11
-Dosgi.dataAreaRequiresExplicitInit=true
-Xms1024m
-Xmx3024m
--add-modules=ALL-SYSTEM
-Xdock:icon=../Resources/Eclipse.icns
-XstartOnFirstThread
-Dorg.eclipse.swt.internal.carbon.smallFonts
-Declipse.p2.max.threads=10
-Doomph.update.url=http://download.eclipse.org/oomph/updates/milestone/latest
-Doomph.redirection.index.redirection=index:/->http://git.eclipse.org/c/oomph/org.eclipse.oomph.git/plain/setups/

As you see here, I have added/modified below parameters:

  • -XX:+UseStringDeduplication
    • Enables the String Deduplication feature within G1
  • -Xss128m
    • is used to limit how much memory a stack consumes
  • -Xmn1024m
    • the size of the heap for the young generation
  • -Xms1024m
    • this is initial Java Heap size
  • -Xmx3024m
    • this is maximum Java Heap size

Please replace your eclipse.ini file with this one.

Make sure to double verify above file. Make appropriate changes to path if required.

If you face JVM Path error then please follow Eclipse will throw JVM path error tutorial.

NOTE:  There is no permgen setting since JDK8. If you are running Java7 and below I would suggest you to add PermGen setting too.

Windows Version of eclipse.ini file

-startup
plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher_1.5.0.v20180512-1130.jar
--launcher.library
C:\Users\shah\.p2\pool\plugins\org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.win32.win32.x86_64_1.1.700.v20180518-1200
-product
org.eclipse.epp.package.jee.product
-showsplash
org.eclipse.epp.package.common
--launcher.defaultAction
openFile
--launcher.appendVmargs
-vmargs
-Dosgi.requiredJavaVersion=1.8
-Dosgi.instance.area.default=@user.home/eclipse-workspace
-XX:+UseG1GC
-XX:+UseStringDeduplication
-XX:+AggressiveOpts
--add-modules=ALL-SYSTEM
-Dosgi.requiredJavaVersion=1.8
-Dosgi.dataAreaRequiresExplicitInit=true
-Xss128m
-Xmn1024m
-Xms1024m
-Xmx3024m
--add-modules=ALL-SYSTEM
-Declipse.p2.max.threads=10
-Doomph.update.url=http://download.eclipse.org/oomph/updates/milestone/latest
-Doomph.redirection.index.redirection=index:/->http://git.eclipse.org/c/oomph/org.eclipse.oomph.git/plain/setups/

Please update line 4 above with your user path.

Hope this helps you speedup your Eclipse IDE and workbench. Let me know if you face any issue modifying eclipse.ini file.

If you liked this article, then please share it on social media. Have a question or suggestion? Please leave a comment to start the discussion.

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About App

I'm an Engineer by profession, Blogger by passion & Founder of Crunchify, LLC, the largest free blogging & technical resource site for beginners. Love SEO, SaaS, #webperf, WordPress, Java. With over 16 millions+ pageviews/month, Crunchify has changed the life of over thousands of individual around the globe teaching Java & Web Tech for FREE.

Reader Interactions

  10 Comments...

  1. Ulrich Giorgio Wenzel Jaeger says

    it’s dangerous to copy and paste some text if you don’t know what you are doing you will definetely mess your eclipse installation up. So don’t copy paste it but instead try to understand which line does which thing and to better understand the impacts of the properties. Not mentioned it is not just copy & paste guys be carefull

    Reply

  2. HansSatan says

    I had a problem with eclipse on my mac freezing at the startup screen. It would sit there for like 10 minutes and finally exit. By trial and error I found I could avoid the problem by setting
    -Dosgi.dataAreaRequiresExplicitInit=false

    I am using eclipse 2021-06 (4.20.0) build id 0210612-2011. But I had the same sort of problem with some previous versions.

    Reply

    • App Shah says

      Hi there – are you running on Windows or Mac?

      Is your Eclipse not responding in middle of operation or during startup? Can you share some more details?

      Reply

  5. joanie jackson says

    thanks for your article, it is just in time for me. I use Eclipse pretty exclusively for my development. I am using the photon version. I have been using it fine every day until just now. I shut down my eclipse and now when I try to restart it, I get this error: “Java was started but returned exist code = 1”. Furthermore, when I look in the eclipse folder in my Program Files directory, I don’t see the .ini file any longer. Do you have any ideas on how to get my .ini file back?

    Reply

    • joanie jackson says

      Never mind, I fixed it. I found my ini file and somehow the path to my JDK was no longer in there. I added it back in and now it’s working fine.

      Reply

      • App Shah says

        Great. I’m glad you found a solution Joanie. Any idea why .ini file wasn’t there in the first place?

        Reply

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