Heap Size

[Jeff Gent]

Is there a difference or a preferred method for specifying the heap sizes?

<j2se version="1.6+" java-vm-args="-Xms256m -Xmx1024m" />

or

<j2se version="1.6+" initial-heap-size="256m" max-heap-size="1024m" />

[Chris Janicki]

The second method is just more self-documenting, and certainly preferred if other people will need to see your code, or if there's a chance you may forget what "Xms" means someday. It's also slightly more stable, in case the command line flags ever change (unlikely). Lastly, your IDE may be able to validate the XML attribute name and values, where as the first version would most likely be ignored by the IDE and therefore up to you to sanity check the args.