Category Archives: OSX

Run Eclipse from the Command Line on OS X

If you’re looking to launch Eclipse passing in the -clean parameter on OS X you’ll want to cd into the eclipse directory that contains your Eclipse.app package and use the following syntax in bash or your favorite shell terminal:
./eclipse -clean -vmargs -XstartOnFirstThread
The arguments following ./eclipse are all passed to Eclipse and the arguments following -vmargs [...]

Mac OS X - Show / Hide Hidden Files in Finder

I always forget how to do this because I toggle this rather sporadically so I’m adding it to the public record.
To show hidden files in Finder pop open your terminal and type the text shown in the screen grab below.

To go back to hiding files we obviously just flip the AppleShowAllFiles flag to FALSE.

Coherence–Parallels blurs lines between host and virtual os

As many of you no doubt are aware, Parallels has released a new beta build with a wicked cool feature known as coherence. Coherence allows the virtual desktop to interact with the native desktop in a fairly seamless manner. This short screencast (30 seconds) gives a small taste of the “coherent” feel Parallels brings to [...]

Setting Eclipse and Java application JVM heap size on Mac OS X

The other day I kept on getting annoying “out of heap space” errors in Eclipse while running a memory intensive Java application I had written and it took a bit of searching to find the answer, so I thought I’d make a quick screencast that demonstrates how to increase the heap size of the JVM [...]

Setting Mac / Unix Environment Variables - Adding Executables to the System Path

After years of resistance I finally caved and bought a sleek, shiny MacBook Pro over the weekend. I’ve been slowly figuring out how to set up my AMES development environment and that means figuring out the basics of using the Unix shell. I struggled to find a simple explanation of how to set environment variables, [...]