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