IntelliJ Idea 2016 memory problems on OSX

Answered

Created January 04, 2017 09:33

I just updated to Idea 2016.3.2. And keep getting this error.

"There is not enough memory to perform the requested operation. Please increase 'Xmx' setting and restart the IDE for change to take effect."

The last thing i did was to increase the Xmx memory option to 2048 in the idea.vmoptions file (as instructed by this answer How to increase IDE memory limit in IntelliJ IDEA on Mac?)

But it seems like it hasn't had the intended effect ("current value: 750").

Does anyone know what I need to do?

... after looking into it some more it now seems to me like it's a git process that causes the memory failure. initiated when I open a git managed project.

8 comments

Created January 04, 2017 09:38

Found the solution: Add this to custom properties (via the help menu; edit custom properties)

vcs.log.index.git=off

That way Idea doesnt attempt to index your entire repo

Serge Baranov

Created January 04, 2017 09:44

This may be specific to your git repository. It's either corrupted or there is some unexpected and long output from the command line git client.

Actual VM options can be observed in idea.log on IDE startup (https://intellij-support.jetbrains.com/hc/articles/207241085).

Permanently deleted user

Created January 23, 2017 21:46

We've seen this to be an issue when working with repos with a large commit history. There's an issue to track this:

https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-164904

Permanently deleted user

Created January 10, 2018 17:11

I found this thread while researching this same issue. Wanted to comment because I was experiencing the problem on a project that is NOT git tracked--wanted to share in case this information is helpful.

It has cropped up twice on my project, and I have resolved it both times by upping the value in the XFX field, restarting the application, then watching the task manager to ensure that the application is utilizing the newly available memory. I found that the application does not typically recognize the additional memory allocation after the initial restart, but closing and opening it a few more times has done the trick.

Serge Baranov

Created January 10, 2018 18:53

Task manager may show the initially allocated memory (Xms + some other overheads and values). Once the initial heap is not enough, JVM will allocate more RAM up to Xmx value (+ overheads).