July 2010

Your Flash Builder is running slow ? Allocate some memory to JVM

I had installed Flash Builder builder some time ago and everything just seems to be allright, but when I had to made a major refactoring for all modules belonging to a very large project Flash Builder started to run slower than Flex Builder. The configuration of my PC is very good, Intel dual core at 2 GHz and 3 gb of RAM and I had allready Flex Builder installed and it worked just fine.  After I done some reasearch I found that you can increase the JVM memory, so these are the steps you must follow:

  1. Exit Flash Builder ( or Eclipse if you have installed Flash Builder as an Eclipse plugin ) if is allready running.
  2. Open your FlashBuilder.ini  or eclipse.ini located in your installation folder. For Windows user: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Flash Builder 4\FlashBuilder.ini ( if you are using a 64 bit operating system you must search in C:\Program Files(x86)\Adobe\Adobe Flash Builder 4\FlashBuilder.ini ) or <path to Eclipse>\eclipse.ini .
  3. Find the maximum heap size setting, e.g. “-Xmx512m”.
  4. Change the maximum heap size. I set it to 1024 mb, e.g. “-Xmx1024m”. Be careful to not allocate more memory than your pc has.
  5. Save the file.
  6. Restart de Flash Builder or Eclipse, now it should run faster.

[Later edit]

Mac users can find the *.ini file this way:

  1. Right click on Adobe Flash Builder 4.app or Eclipse.app, Show Package Contents
  2. Open Contents > MacOS > Adobe Flash Builder 4.ini or eclipse.ini