FAQ How do I increase the heap size available to Eclipse?

Some JVMs put restrictions on the total amount of memory available on the heap. If you are getting OutOfMemoryError s while running Eclipse, the VM can be told to let the heap grow to a larger amount by passing the -vmargs command to the Eclipse launcher. For example, the following command would run Eclipse with a heap size of 256MB:

eclipse [normal arguments] -vmargs -Xmx256M [more VM args]

The arguments after -vmargs are directly passed to the VM. Run java -X for the list of options your VM accepts. Options starting with -X are implementation-specific and may not be applicable to all VMs.

You can also put the extra options in eclipse.ini .

Here is an example;

-startup
plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher_1.0.100.v20080501.jar
--launcher.library
plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.gtk.linux.x86_64_1.0.100.v20080428-1330
-showsplash
org.eclipse.platform
-vm
/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/jre/bin/java
-vmargs
-Xms512m
-Xmx1024m
-XX:+UseParallelGC
-XX:PermSize=256M
-XX:MaxPermSize=512M