FAQ How do I increase the permgen size available to Eclipse?
If you see java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: PermGen space errors, you need to increase the permanent generation space available to Eclipse.
PermGen is the permanent generation of objects in the VM (Class names, internalized strings, objects that will never get garbage-collected). An easy, if somewhat memory-hungry fix is to enlarge the maximum space for these objects by adding
eclipse [normal arguments] -vmargs -XX:PermSize=64M -XX:MaxPermSize=128M [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.
Eclipse 3.3 and Sun VMs on Windows
Eclipse 3.3 supports a new argument to the launcher: --launcher.XXMaxPermSize. On Windows, Eclipse 3.3 ships with the following lines in the eclipse.ini file:
--launcher.XXMaxPermSize 256m
With the above arguments, if the VM being used is a Sun VM and there is not already a -XX:MaxPermSize= VM argument, then the launcher will automatically add -XX:MaxPermSize=256m to the list of VM arguments being used. The 3.3 launcher is only capable of identifying Sun VMs on Windows.
See Also:
This FAQ was originally published in Official Eclipse 3.0 FAQs. Copyright 2004, Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. This text is made available here under the terms of the Eclipse Public License v1.0.