4. Starting Eclipse

You can start Eclipse from the Run menu as

Starting Eclipse in windows

Note

Depending on installation of Eclipse, the path may very.

First you will get the splash screen.

Eclipse splash screen

Then you would be asked to choose an eclipse workspace.

Selecting a workspace in Eclipse

Then you will get the Eclipse Welcome Screen. The welcome screen is only shown for the first time. After that you will always see The default Eclipse

Eclipse welcome screen

As shown in the image, go to the workbench. You will see the normal Eclipse screen.

The default Eclipse

4.1. Different ways of starting Eclipse

These are some of the different ways you can start the Eclipse IDE.

You can start it

• From the GUI. Double click on Eclipse executable

• Command line or the Run menu. Execute eclipse command. (If the eclipse command is in path.)

  On Windows, you may be able to use either of the command depending on where you installed Eclipse or what your path settings are.

  C:\eclipse\eclipse.exe
  
  eclipse.exe
  
  eclipse
  

  Similarly, for Linux

  /opt/eclipse/eclipse
  
  /home/user/opt/eclipse/eclipse
  
  eclipse
  

  For simplicity, we would use eclipse as the common command between Linux and Windows. And assume eclipse executable is in path.

• Pass optional command line arguments:

  # eclipse -vmargs -Xmx<memory size>
  eclipse -vmargs -Xmx700m
  

• Create separate desktop shortcuts with the command line arguments.

4.2. Changing the startup behaviour

4.2.1. Java Settings

Eclipse is based on Java. You can change settings that effect Java.

• The Java Virtual Machine used:

  eclipse -vm c:\java6\jre\bin\javaw
  

• Amount of startup memory allocated:

  eclipse -vmargs -Xms100m
  

• Amount of maximum memory allocated to Eclipse:

  eclipse -vmargs -Xmx700m
  

• Other JVM parameters:

  eclipse -vmargs -XX:MaxPermSize=400m -Xms100m -Xmx700m
  

4.2.2. Eclipse specific settings

• The workspace used by Eclipse:

  eclipse -data x:/secure/eclipse.workspace
  

• Clean up the meta data

  eclipse -data x:/secure/eclipse.workspace -clean

• Etc.

---

More about starting Eclipse can be found at this Eclipsepedia page