Note: Forgive the formatting, I need to change my styles.css to get ordered lists back.

I’m taking a Java course this semester and it was annoying not having access to Eclipse on the various computers in labs around campus. So I applied some of my Google-fu and found a way to install Eclipse on a USB stick.

The original instructions are here, way at the bottom of the page. I relocated them here and changed them to mirror my experience.

1. Download Eclipse and install it on your USB drive. I used EasyEclipse For Desktop Java from nexB.
2. Install a JDK on your or any other PC. The default installation path should be something like "C:\Programs\Java", containing a folder named "jdk1.5.0_xx"
3. Create a subfolder "JDKs" in your Eclipse folder (Depending on your drive letter and extraction path this should look like E:\Portables\Eclipse\JDKs
4. Copy the jdk1.5.0_xx folder into the JDKs folder. (like E:\Portables\Eclipse\JDKs\jdk1.5.0_xx) This can take some time.
5. Edit the file "E:\Portables\Eclipse\eclipse.ini" to

   -vm
   ..\JDKsjdk1.5.0_xx\bin\javaw
   -vmargs
   -Xms40m
   -Xmx256m

   (replace "jdk1.5.0_xx" with the actual folder name) This is more elegant than using a batch file due to being independent from drive letters and path variables.

6. Run "E:\Portables\Eclipse\eclipse.exe"
7. When asked for a workspace location, you can enter ".\workspace", which will create a workspace in your eclipse folder (like "E:\Portables\Eclipse\workspace\")
8. Additionally I trimmed down my JDK install by removing the samples and demos directories.

Posted September 8th, 2006 - Permalink
Categories: Computers - Eclipse - Java - Portable - Programming - Software
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