Speedup IntelliJ-Idea

Question

I'm using intelliJ for Scala development and got 8 GB of new RAM last week, so I thought: time to use it. I checked my task manager and found intelliJ using ~250mb. From eclipse I knew that tweaking JVM options helped a lot in improving speed, so I googled ...

and found this one for OS X I couldn't find the JVM option immediately, so I started tweaking Xmx. At 1 GB, I realized it doesn't start any more. I checked the intelliJ java version, found it's outdated and 32bit.

So in order to use your current JDK and 64 bit you have to change your link to from:

IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition 10.0.2\bin\idea.exe 

to

IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition 10.0.2\bin\idea.BAT 

and adjust "Start in"

The bat looks for JDK_HOME and uses 64bit now.

My current VM Options, which are located in

...\IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition 10.0.2\bin\idea.exe.vmoptions 

are

-Xms512m -Xmx1024m -XX:MaxPermSize=512m -ea -server -XX:+DoEscapeAnalysis -XX:+UseCompressedOops -XX:+UnlockExperimentalVMOptions -XX:+UseParallelGC 

Instead of -XX:+UseParallelGC, you can use -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC, which is

the accepted choice for desktop apps, but I have changed to the throughput collector recently. because with a fast machine and a small enough heap, you have quick pauses, more throughput and no issues with fragmentation (ijuma. #scala)

Changes:

-XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC //removed // removed, because not needed with the lastest JVM.     -XX:+UnlockExperimentalVMOptions     -XX:+DoEscapeAnalysis     -XX:+UseCompressedOops 

I'll stick to these options for now. I would really like to know your experience with it.

Which options work best for you? How do I hide this cmd window while running intelliJ through the .bat? :)

By the way, here's another link for tuning intelliJ. Basically it says on p.20/21 to turn off windows restore and antivirus for system dirs.

Another way to speed up intelliJ is to put intellij system folder on ramdrive (thanks OlegYch|h).

from idea.properties  idea.system.path=${idea.home}/.IntelliJIdea/system 

See Superuser for Win 7 64bit RAM Drive or this one. 1 GB seems fine for me.

Another hint a friend gave me is to exclude the project directories from your antivirus (scan on access)

There are similar posts regarding tuning Eclipse:

• Eclipse Helios 3.6
• Eclipse Juno 4.2
• Specify the JVM to start Eclipse with

Answer 1

This combination works great on my Intellij13 running in Mavericks:

Updated Jul 18, 2017:

# custom IntelliJ IDEA VM options  -ea -server -Xms2G -Xmx4096M -Xss2m -XX:MaxMetaspaceSize=2G -XX:ReservedCodeCacheSize=1G -XX:MetaspaceSize=512m -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC -XX:+DoEscapeAnalysis -XX:SoftRefLRUPolicyMSPerMB=50 -XX:+UnlockExperimentalVMOptions -Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true -Dsun.io.useCanonCaches=false -XX:LargePageSizeInBytes=256m -XX:+UseCodeCacheFlushing -XX:ParallelGCThreads=8 -XX:+DisableExplicitGC -XX:+ExplicitGCInvokesConcurrent -XX:+PrintGCDetails -XX:+PrintFlagsFinal -XX:+AggressiveOpts -XX:+CMSClassUnloadingEnabled -XX:CMSInitiatingOccupancyFraction=60 -XX:+CMSClassUnloadingEnabled -XX:+CMSParallelRemarkEnabled -XX:+UseAdaptiveGCBoundary -XX:+UseSplitVerifier -XX:CompileThreshold=10000 -XX:+OptimizeStringConcat -XX:+UseStringCache -XX:+UseFastAccessorMethods -XX:+UnlockDiagnosticVMOptions -XX:+HeapDumpOnOutOfMemoryError -XX:+UseCompressedOops -XX:-OmitStackTraceInFastThrow -Dawt.useSystemAAFontSettings=lcd  -Dsun.java2d.renderer=sun.java2d.marlin.MarlinRenderingEngine 

I keep this setting updated at https://github.com/adben/config/blob/master/idea64.vmoptions

Answer 2

For me switching to SSD-drive improved performance a lot (especially for large projects).