Where does Eclipse look for eclipse.ini under Linu

Question

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?

Answer 1

I have Ubuntu 18 and eclipse installation is squashed in a file

/var/lib/snapd/snaps/eclipse_40.snap

which is mount on /snap/eclipse/40 as read only. Just run

mount | grep eclipse*.snap

This eclipse.ini file is really read only, that means, you cannot modify it, even with sudo. However, I also have a eclipse.ini.ignored file in HOME/.eclipse/some number/configuration. This is being by default ignored, but you can change the "launcher.ini" in the eclipse launcher command.

Answer 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:

Answer 3

According to https://wiki.eclipse.org/Eclipse.ini

Eclipse startup is controlled by the options in $ECLIPSE_HOME/eclipse.ini. If $ECLIPSE_HOME is not defined, the default eclipse.ini in your Eclipse installation directory (or in the case of Mac, the Eclipse.app/Contents/MacOS directory) is used.

Answer 4

The certain way to make sure is to run strace on eclipse. In the output you'll see where is eclipse actually trying to pull the file from.

Answer 5

There is only one file.

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

Answer 6

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).