Solution 1:

There is no way to dynamically increase the heap programatically since the heap is allocated when the Java Virtual Machine is started.

However, you can use this command

java -Xmx1024M YourClass

to set the memory to 1024

or, you can set a min max

java -Xms256m -Xmx1024m YourClassNameHere

Solution 2:

If you are using a lot of memory and facing memory leaks, then you might want to check if you are using a large number of ArrayLists or HashMaps with many elements each.

An ArrayList is implemented as a dynamic array. The source code from Sun/Oracle shows that when a new element is inserted into a full ArrayList, a new array of 1.5 times the size of the original array is created, and the elements copied over. What this means is that you could be wasting up to 50% of the space in each ArrayList you use, unless you call its trimToSize method. Or better still, if you know the number of elements you are going to insert before hand, then call the constructor with the initial capacity as its argument.

I did not examine the source code for HashMap very carefully, but at a first glance it appears that the array length in each HashMap must be a power of two, making it another implementation of a dynamic array. Note that HashSet is essentially a wrapper around HashMap.

Solution 3:

There are a variety of tools that you can use to help diagnose this problem. The JDK includes JVisualVM that will allow you to attach to your running process and show what objects might be growing out of control. Netbeans has a wrapper around it that works fairly well. Eclipse has the Eclipse Memory Analyzer which is the one I use most often, just seems to handle large dump files a bit better. There's also a command line option, -XX:+HeapDumpOnOutOfMemoryError that will give you a file that is basically a snapshot of your process memory when your program crashed. You can use any of the above mentioned tools to look at it, it can really help a lot when diagnosing these sort of problems.

Depending on how hard the program is working, it may be a simple case of the JVM not knowing when a good time to garbage collect may be, you might also look into the parallel garbage collection options as well.

Solution 4:

I also faced the same problem.I resolved by doing the build by following steps as.

-->Right click on the project select RunAs ->Run configurations

Select your project as BaseDirectory. In place of goals give eclipse:eclipse install

-->In the second tab give -Xmx1024m as VM arguments.

Solution 5:

I would like to add that this problem is similar to common Java memory leaks.

When the JVM garbage collector is unable to clear the "waste" memory of your Java / Java EE application over time, OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space will be the outcome.

It is important to perform a proper diagnostic first:

  • Enable verbose:gc. This will allow you to understand the memory growing pattern over time.
  • Generate and analyze a JVM Heap Dump. This will allow you to understand your application memory footprint and pinpoint the source of the memory leak(s).
  • You can also use Java profilers and runtime memory leak analyzer such as Plumbr as well to help you with this task.