Eclipse On A USB Stick
I'm taking a Java course this semester and it was annoying not having access to Eclipse on the various computers in labs around campus. So I applied some of my Google-fu and found a way to install Eclipse on a USB stick.
The original instructions are here, way at the bottom of the page. I relocated them here and changed them to mirror my experience.
- Download Eclipse and install it on your USB drive. I used EasyEclipse For Desktop Java from nexB.
- Install a JDK on your or any other PC. The default installation path should be something like "C:\Programs\Java", containing a folder named "jdk1.5.0_xx"
- Create a subfolder "JDKs" in your Eclipse folder (Depending on your drive letter and extraction path this should look like E:\Portables\Eclipse\JDKs
- Copy the jdk1.5.0_xx folder into the JDKs folder. (like
E:\Portables\Eclipse\JDKs\jdk1.5.0_xx) This can take some time. - Edit the file "E:\Portables\Eclipse\eclipse.ini" to
-vm
..\JDKsjdk1.5.0_xx\bin\javaw
-vmargs
-Xms40m
-Xmx256m
(replace "jdk1.5.0_xx" with the actual folder name) This is more elegant than using a batch file due to being independent from drive letters and path variables. 6. Run "E:\Portables\Eclipse\eclipse.exe" 7. When asked for a workspace location, you can enter ".\workspace", which will create a workspace in your eclipse folder (like "E:\Portables\Eclipse\workspace") 8. Additionally I trimmed down my JDK install by removing the samples and demos directories.