IDEA on Mac OSX

From Shrubbery

Tips for running IDEA on a Mac.

Changing the JVM Memory Settings

Inspired by this blog entry...

IDEA's JVM memory settings are in a different place on the Mac. Instead of being in a '.vmoptions' file, they are in an XML file called Info.plist in the VMOptions section. This is usually at the bottom of the file.

Example commands (change the location to your own IDEA install directory):

$ cd /Applications/IntelliJ\ IDEA \8.1.app/Contents
$ vim Info.plist
/-Xms
... change the settings on this line ...
:wq

Example values:

<key>VMOptions</key>
<string>-Xms64m -Xmx512m -XX:MaxPermSize=150m -Xbootclasspath/a:../lib/boot.jar -ea</string>