Posts tagged vm

Toda. You thought your life is gone away for the next few years using Ganymede or worse.

Sure you have to work with Java version 1.4.2, but that doesn’t mean you cannot use the latest IDE from Eclipse (3.7 Indigo as i am writing). In fact i have many portable and installed versions of JDK on my machine.

Starting with Eclipse Helios, the developers have made JDK 5 a minimum requirement for JVM. This way, they stopped providing backwards compatibility with Java version 1.4.2.

Maybe you could have other reasons for not using the default JDK that Eclipse points to, or downloads with, such as for the reason of trying out the Oracle’s new friendly licensed JRockit JDK. For these reasons, there are many ways to “point your Eclipse IDE to another JVM”, and the one that i will illustrate here is fairly simple and quick.

1. Go to your Eclipse Installation

(If you can’t find it, right click on the shortcut icon that you use to launch the program > Properties > Find target)

2. Locate the file eclipse.ini and open with your favorite editor

3. Insert a new option -vm above the -vmargs option.

-vm
C:/Program Files/Java/jrockit-jdk1.6.0_26-R28.1.4-4.0.1/bin/javaw.exe

Note that this step is crucial in that the -vm option must be above the -vmargs for it to work.

Under the -vm argument, insert the installation location of your JDK that you wish to point your Eclipse to.

4. Save the file and start Eclipse!