Where does Eclipse look for eclipse.ini under Linux

I've just been setting up a Ubuntu workstation and wanted to add some settings to eclipse.ini. When I searched for the file I found:

  • /etc/eclipse.ini
  • /usr/lib/eclipse.ini

My questions are:

  • Does Eclipse actually use both files?
  • If so, in what order does it read them?
  • How does it merge them?
  • Both of the files I found are system wide, is there a location in my home directory I could put one that would effect only my instances?

Solution 1:

There is only one file.

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 16 Aug 8 2012 /usr/lib/eclipse/eclipse.ini -> /etc/eclipse.ini

Solution 2:

Here's how to determine which eclipse.ini file you should use (joomla.org):

  • If you downloaded Eclipse IDE manually from internet the "eclipse.ini" file is just inside the unpacked folder
  • If you installed Eclipse via terminal or software center the location of the file is "/etc/eclipse.ini"
  • In some Linux versions the file can be found at "/usr/share/eclipse/eclipse.ini". Do not use this file if you found a config file at "/etc/eclipse.ini".

To be sure where your Eclipse folder is, check $ECLIPSE_HOME, and if not specified (these directions at least work for Juno):

  • Open Eclipse as you normally do.
  • Click Help -> About Eclipse SDK
  • Click Installation Details
  • Go to the Configuration tab
  • Find "eclipse.home.location=file:PATH". PATH is where eclipse is installed.

sources:

  • http://docs.joomla.org/Configuring_Eclipse_IDE_for_PHP_development/Linux:

Solution 3:

You probably have already found this out, chances are when you installed Eclipse the installation created (or you did manually) a file /usr/bin/eclipse which if you check it probably looks like the following:

#!/bin/sh
export ECLIPSE_HOME="/opt/eclipse"

$ECLIPSE_HOME/eclipse $*

especially if you followed instructions similar to the ones like these on If-not-true-then-false

On the other hand if you have installed from a package, I suspect you will find that eclipse ends up in /usr/bin, most likely a symbolic link to /usr/lib/eclipse/eclipse (or at least I found it on my Fedora system after using yum to install eclipse).