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Virtual Machine (VM) options

Certain configuration of SmartGit has to be done by VM options, in files called smartgit.vmoptions. Usually you will want to specify VM options just for your account (current user):

  • Windows: %APPDATA%\syntevo\SmartGit\smartgit.vmoptions (%APPDATA% is the path defined in the environment variable APPDATA)
  • Linux: ~/.config/smartgit/smartgit.vmoptions
  • MacOS: ~/Library/Preferences/SmartGit/smartgit.vmoptions

Alternatively (but not recommended), VM options can also be specified system-wide in following files:

  • Windows: the global file is bin\smartgit.vmoptions in SmartGit’s installation directory
  • Linux: the global file is bin/smartgit.vmoptions in SmartGit’s installation directory
  • MacOS: the global file is Contents/MacOS/smartgit.vmoptions in SmartGit’s installation directory SmartGit.app

The smartgit.vmoptions file contains a list of additional VM options which should be passed to the Java VM. VM options are basically arguments to Java and every argument must be declared on a separate line.

Example

-Xmx2048M
-Xms1024M

Location of the Settings Directory

See Installation and Files for information about the default location and contents of the settings directory. On Windows and Linux, you can change its location by modifying the VM option -Dsmartgit.settings.

Note

Changing the settings directory’s location is not supported on MacOS

Within the value of smartgit.settings, certain Java system properties are allowed, such as user.home. Another accepted value is the special smartgit.installation property, which refers to the SmartGit installation directory.

Example

To tell SmartGit to store its settings in the subdirectory .settings of the SmartGit installation directory, add follow line to smartgit.vmoptions:

-Dsmartgit.settings=${smartgit.installation}\.settings (Windows)

-Dsmartgit.settings=${smartgit.installation}/.settings (Linux)

Location of the Updates Directory

The Updates directory contains downloaded program updates. See Installation and Files for information about the default location and contents of the Updates directory. On Windows and Linux, you can change its location by modifying the VM option -Dsmartboot.sourceDirectory.

Example

To tell SmartGit to store its program updates in the subdirectory .updates of the SmartGit installation directory, add follow line to smartgit.vmoptions:

-Dsmartgit.settings=.updates

Memory Limit

The memory limit (also known as maximum heap size) specifies how much RAM the SmartGit process is allowed to use. The memory limit can be configured by the VM option -Xmx.

Example

To change the maximum memory limit to 1GB, add following line to smartgit.vmoptions:

-Xmx1024m

If the set value is too low, SmartGit may run out of memory during memory-intensive operations.

Extended PATH

On Linux and MacOS, you can extend the PATH used by SmartGit (and all processes invoked by SmartGit, especially Git itself) by adding path=/additional/path to smartgit.vmoptions. This path= lines can be used multiple times and will be appended to the PATH in the order of occurrence.

Example

To make the file /usr/local/bin/git-lfs accessible without full path specification, add following line to smartgit.vmoptions:

path=/usr/local/bin

Warning

Do not specify the Git-LFS file path, but its parent directory’s path - as for all usual path modifications!