Portable Eclipse with JRE

Question

I'm not able to run a majority of programs from my work computer due to JRE <= 1.6 does not support switch statements for Strings. As I'm not able to install or update due to admin restrictions, would it be possible to create a portable Eclipse on a USB that incorporates the JRE (1.7) as well?

Solution 1

The Eclipse part is easy. Just unzip Eclipse on your USB.

You'll have to install Java to your USB. Afterwards, go into Eclipse Window -> Preferences; Java -> Installed JREs and make sure your Java JRE or JDK is listed and the default.

Create your workspace on the USB, and you should be ready to go.

Solution 2

It's fairly easy to run Eclipse on a USB drive. You just need to make sure it knows to look for Java on your USB drive rather than on the host computer.

If you have Java Portable installed on your drive, you can tell Eclipse to use it by adding the following to your eclipse.ini file.

-vm
/PortableApps/CommonFiles/Java64/bin/javaw.exe

Note that Eclipse Portable stores the file as EclipsePortable\App\eclipse\eclipse.ini.

Solution 3

In my experience, since Eclipse upgraded from Indigo to Juno, the .zip they provide is already portable. It no longer creates any folders or files in the Windows user data folder.

Comments

[Georgian]

Just copy them from the stick onto the work machine, and run them from there. Don't forget to set the environment variable to avoid future issues.

[Cheung]

I suggest to use portableApp version JRE, so you don't need install JRE.

[Nic]

In (at least) the newest Eclipse, when I try to add a JRE at "./jre", it autoexpands to "F:/Eclipse/jre", instead of staying relative. I'm not able to test right now, but I think this leads to failing to run whenever it's not on the F: drive. How can I fix this, and ensure that all paths are relative instead of absolute?

[Gilbert Le Blanc]

@QPaysTaxes: I haven't tried this with the latest Eclipse, but I'd suggest installing Java on your USB first, then unpacking or installing Eclipse, and finally making sure that the only JDK or JRE that Eclipse is pointing to is the one installed on the USB