The Status Memory Monitor Plugin is an add-on module for the Eclipse Workbench status line, which offers:
This Eclipse Status Memory Monitor offers an Eclipse status line based show up representation. It's settings can be customized via the Window|Preferences... Status Memory Monitor preferences page.
After installing the Status Memory Monitor and restarting Eclipse the following memory monitor should be available in the Eclipse status line:
This Status Memory Monitor has some support for customizing it's settings via an Eclipse Preferences page entry. Thus you can customize the Monitor's settings as you like. In order to customize the Memory Monitor's settings, open the main Eclipse Prefernces window and select the Status Memory Monitor entry inside the treeview, as shown below.
In order to reset the Status Memory Monitor to his preset default settings, just press the Reset Defaults button and afterwards the Apply or OK button.
There are actually two other quick ways available to access the Status Memory Monitor preferences page:
The automatic GC setting is as a default disabled. To setup and activate this feature, fill in the appropriate automatic garbage collection activation size in megabytes (the default shown value is ~128 MB) and the automatic garbage collection delay time into the shown text fields:
The value entered into the size text field must be a integer value (which represents megabytes) and should be slightly smaller than the inside Eclipse used or setup JVM -Xmxn value. The value entered into the delay time text field must be a integer value (which represents minutes), this value defines the delay time between which automatic garbage collection runs will be performed. After doing so, enable the Activate automatic GC... check box to finally allow auto GC to take place at all.
If the automatic GC option has been activated or enabled, the toggled
Memory Monitor view will indicate this by showing the automatic GC setup
size as a default orange colored + value in Mbytes,
which is followed by the word aGC.
Otherwise, if this option is disabled, this orange
string will be shown instead as - value
in Mbytes. You can generally see from this +/-
indicator too, if the auto GC option is enabled or disabled.
From this point on, you have to use any of the Memory Monitor views in the normal usual way, but now just in case the setup auto GC memory size has been reached or exceeded inside Eclipse, a different colored monitor bar view will be shown in the memory monitor drawing area:
Note however, that under Eclipse an auto GC sometimes perfoms this fast, that you may even not be able to recognize that color changing.
This Status Memory Monitor bar color changing informs you that the automatic GC memory size has been reached or exceeded and that an automatic GC will now be executed. After doing so, the Status Memory Monitor bar continues to show the allocated and used memory, but the setup auto GC option will be delayed by the setup delay minute value. NOTE: that this is due to the fact, to give the user and also the Eclipse IDE a chance to be able to execute other tasks or events. Otherwise the Eclipse Workbench would possibly always again and again be executing continuously an automatic GC and so may be blocking other actual Eclipse IDE tasks.
The memory warning setting is as a default disabled. To setup and activate this warning feature, fill in the appropriate critical size in megabytes (the default shown value is usually ~128 MB) into the shown text field:
The value entered into the text field must be a integer value (which represents megabytes) and should be slightly smaller than the inside Eclipse used or setup JVM -Xmxn value. After doing so, enable the Activate warning... check box to finally allow memory warnings to take place at all.
If the memory warning option has been activated or enabled, the toggled
Memory Monitor view will indicate this by showing the critical setup size
as a default red colored + value in Mbytes
which is followed by the word warn. Otherwise,
if this option is disabled, this red string
will be shown instead as - value in Mbytes.
You can generally see from this +/- indicator
too, if the warn option is enabled or disabled.
From this point on, you have to use any of the Memory Monitor views in the normal usual way, but now just in case the setup critical memory size has been reached or exceeded inside Eclipse, the following monitor bar view warn coloring always appears in the memory monitor drawing area:
This status bar warning indication informs you that the critical memory size has been reached or exceeded. The status bar warning indication changes to it's normal coloring automatically, when the actual used Workbench memory shrinks under the previously setup warn option value.
In case the critical memory size has been reached or exceeded
you can try to press the
garbage collection button in order to free up some used memory:
After doing so, the Memory Monitor view continues to show the allocated and used memory, but the status bar warning indication coloring might now have disappeared, in case the actual used heap memory size is now lower than the setup warn option memory size.
NOTE: that the automatic GC option has the visual show up precedence for bar graph colorings inside the Status Memory Monitor, if both the autoGC and warn options are enabled together.
Since the Status Memory Monitor needs and occupies some amount of size of the Eclipse status line, it's best used inside a wide setup Eclipse workbench window. This means, that if you make the Eclipse workbench too small the Status Memory Monitor's viewing area will probably not be sized/resized in a very well looking and behaving manner.
PLEASE NOTE: that the Status Memory Monitor as default uses a forced right side positioning inside the Eclipse status line. If you encounter problems by viewing the Status Memory Monitor inside a possibly resized (made smaller) Eclipse workbench window, you can try to disable the Status Memory Monitor's right side positioning option from it's preference page:
If the above shown option is unchecked the positioning of the Status Memory Monitor is no longer forced to the right side of the Eclipse status line.
NOTE FURTHER: that there can be circumstances where disabling the above mentioned positioning option might not solve your needs. E.g. the Status Memory Monitor still occupies to much space of the Eclipse status line space or the like. In such cases you should disable the Status Memory Monitor's show up completely by disabling the monitor's show up option inside the preference page.
When you uncheck the above shown option, the monitor will no longer be visible
on the Eclipse status line and the space it previously occupied will be available
for other status line services.
To uninstall the Status Memory Monitor just delete it's plugin directory from your Eclipse plugins installation directory. Then restart Eclipse.
The Memory Monitor Plugin has been tested with versions of Eclipse R3.1 and the JDK 1.5 running under Windows 2000 SP4. This version might not work with earlier Eclipse versions.
If you have problems with the installation of the Memory Monitor or support questions, you are welcome to contact
via email: info@kyrsoft.com.
For any other questions regarding the operation of Eclipse, or any general Java questions you are encouraged to visit the appropriate newsgroups on the Eclipse news server. There you will find many good people who are willing to help others with technical problems.
Information on the Eclipse newsgroups is available at: