Creating a Shortcut to Eclipse

Use this procedure to create a shortcut to Eclipse. It is recommended that you create shortcuts with different heap size allocations. They can be located on the desktop to start a session on Eclipse or M3 Adaptation Kit (MAK) with a suitable memory allocation. For more information, see Specifying the Heap Size.

To create a shortcut to Eclipse

  1. Open the Eclipse folder and locate the file eclipse.exe.
  2. Right-click the file and select Create Shortcut.
    Note:  To avoid a corrupted Eclipse, make sure that you create a shortcut that points to a mapped drive and not a UNC Path. A UNC path is used as a default target when you right-click the Eclipse application file that is in a mapped drive and select "Create Shortcut".
  3. Rename the shortcut to specify the heap size for easy identification. For example, you can rename a shortcut as Eclipse-512 if it is set with heap size of 512 MB.
  4. Right-click the shortcut and select Properties. The MAK Properties window is displayed.
  5. Click the Shortcut tab. The properties of the shortcut are displayed.
  6. Verify that both the Target and Start in fields do not use any UNC Paths like, \\SEST000\MAK\eclipse.exe to avoid a corrupted Eclipse.
  7. Consider the following arguments in the Target field:
    Argument Description
    -showlocation Add this argument to makes it easy to see the currently used workspace.
    -vmargs Add this argument to tell the JVM that there are succeeding parameters.
    -Xmx512M Add this argument to as a JVM parameter to set the heap size.

    For example, C:\eclipse\eclipse.exe -showlocation -vmargs -Xmx512M. You must specify the correct string, otherwise Eclipse will use the default settings for the heap size.

  8. Click OK to apply the changes.