[epp-dev] eclipse.ini - memory settings in packages

[Markus Knauer <mknauer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi *,

Wayne's blog [1] about memory settings and this old MaxPermSize problem 
reminds me that I wanted to bring up this discussion here in EPP.

Every EPP package can modify the memory parameters on a per platform basis by 
putting the required parameters into the eclipse.ini. Of course, this should 
be done carefully. I did that in the past with settings that were *very* 
conservative and always followed the 'prooven' configurations from the 
Eclipse SDK... two examples:

* Dosgi.requiredJavaVersion=1.5 was introduced as soon as the bug in the 
platform launcher had been fixed (bug 191598).

* --launcher.XXMaxPermSize 256M is available in the Windows versions *only* 
because there we have the only launcher that can detect a Sun JVM reliable 
(e.g. bug 191563, 203325,...). 

Now I would like to ask everybody, if there are other parameters the could or 
should be set in the different packages?

And the other thing that is *really* annoying it the missing MaxPermSize 
setting in the non-Windows and non-Mac platforms: Linux. Whenever someone is 
using the larger packages (JEE, Modeling, Reporting) on Linux, he/she will 
run into the out-of-memory situation which is a bad user experience.

On Windows it is possible to detect a Sun JVM (as mentioned above) and to add 
the MaxPermSize parameter when launching Eclipse. 
On Mac (to the best of my knowledge) the only available JVMs are the Sun JVM 
which means it is save to set these parameters.
On Linux there are many JVMs from different vendors available (Sun, IBM, 
BEA, ...) and we cannot be sure that this non-standard parameter which is 
working fine in the Sun JVM will work on other JVMs. But if I download 
a 'package' I expect something that is running out-of-the-box without 
manually modifications in the ini-file.

What are your opinions and experiences? Or can someone point me to a bug 
report that this feature is now available on other platforms than Windows?

Markus


[1] http://dev.eclipse.org/blogs/wayne/2008/02/28/stupid-eclipse-tricks/