Luis de la Rosa

Eclipse Easter Egg: Heap Monitor

Here is a nice little Easter Egg. OK, not exactly, since you do have to download it by itself. But it is written by the Platform UI Team and if Eclipse weren't so darn pluggable, it probably would be included. I mean, there's a flight simulator in Microsoft Excel! But since Eclipse is so pluggable (hmmm I wonder if anyone is working on a flight simulator plug-in), you get to use the built-in Update Manager to get...

...the Eclipse Heap Monitor. (Well, that's my name for it. The official name is the Heap Status plug-in.)

I'm a former IntelliJ user and this is one of those things that I miss. It gives me a nice indication of how much memory I've got to work with. Also, with big projects, you can see if maybe you need to increase your initial and maximum heap sizes. And if you like, you can always press the Trash button to collect the garbage.

Here's the install instructions as well as the official description from the "(Platform) UI Component Development Resources" page:

The Heap Status plug-in shows the current Java heap usage in the status line (total heap and amount used). A button allows you to force a garbage collect. It includes a preference page (Window > Preferences > Workbench > Memory Indicator) which lets you turn it on and off. This plug-in works on Eclipse 2.1, 3.0, 3.0.1 and 3.1.

The Heap Status plug-in can be obtained via the Platform UI team's update site. Use Help > Software Updates > Find and Install > Search for new features to install > New Remote Site, and give the following as the URL.

http://dev.eclipse.org/viewcvs/index.cgi/%7Echeckout%7E/platform-ui-home/updates

When prompted, choose Yes to restart. If you don't see the status indicator in the status line, or if the preference page is missing, restart eclipse with the -clean command line option.

Please report any problems to the Platform UI component in bugzilla.