This page last changed on Jan 10, 2008 by edawson.

Environment variables are system-wide settings that are required for certain applications. Instructions on Setting Environment Variables are here.
The following is a list of the environment variables used by FishEye.

JAVA_HOME

The JAVA_HOME environment variable is used by FishEye to select the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) to be used to run FishEye. If this environment variable is not set, FishEye will use whatever Java executable is available on the path. In Linux systems, this may sometimes be GCJ-based which causes some problems running FishEye.

See the instructions on setting JAVA_HOME.

FISHEYE_OPTS

FishEye uses the FISHEYE_OPTS environment variable to pass parameters to the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) used to run FishEye. This is typically used to set the Java heap size available to FishEye. With a Sun JVM, for example, you would use:

FISHEYE_OPTS=-Xmx256m

This would give FishEye a 256 MByte heap. See Tuning FishEye for more information.

It is possible to put other JVM options into the FISHEYE_OPTS environment variable. For example, the -Xrs options should be used if running FishEye as a service under Windows, to prevent the JVM closing when an interactive user logs out.

FISHEYE_ARGS

FISHEYE_ARGS are the arguments which will be passed to FishEye when it is started. You can set this to --debug, for example, if you always want to have FishEye debugging put into the FishEye log files.

FISHEYE_LIBRARY_PATH

The FISHEYE_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable tells FishEye where it should look to load any additional native libraries.

FISHEYE_INST

The FISHEYE_INST variable tells FishEye where to store its data. If you wish to separate FishEye's data from its application files in FISHEYE_HOME, you should use this variable. Read more about this variable in the Installation Guide.

Setting Environment Variables under Windows XP

(Linux instructions are here)

1. Click 'Start' > 'Control Panel' > 'System'.

Screenshot: System Properties under Windows XP Control Panel

2. Click the 'Advanced' tab.
3. Click the 'Environment Variables' button.

Screenshot: Environment Variables under Windows XP Control Panel

4. Click 'New'.
5. In the 'Variable name' field, enter the name of the environment variable, for example

FISHEYE_OPTS

6. In the 'Variable value' field, enter the setting as required. This may be quite cryptic, for example the default value for FISHEYE_OPTS is this:

-Xmx256m

Screenshot: Setting Environment Variables under Windows XP

7. Restart the computer.

Setting Environment Variables under Linux or UNIX based platforms

There are a number of ways to set environment variables on Linux or UNIX based systems (including Mac OS X). Here are just two:

For your current user,

1. Open up a shell or terminal window
2. Type this command:

vi ~/.profile

(vi is a text editor, you can use another if desired)
3. Add this command:

export (variable name)=(variable value)

Where (variable name) and (variable value) are the environment variable elements. For example, if the environment variable you are setting is FISHEYE_OPTS, and the variable value is -Xmx256m, you would type the following:

export FISHEYE_OPTS=-Xmx256m

Add this command on its own line at the end of the file.
4. Save, and restart your shell.

For all users in the system,

1. Open up a shell or terminal window
2. vi /etc/profile (replace vi with your favourite text editor)
3. Add export (variable name)=(variable value) on its own line at the end of the file
4. Save, and restart your shell

If you are using a GUI, you may not need to open up the shell. Instead, you might be able to open the file directly in a graphical text editor.


Document generated by Confluence on Apr 14, 2008 23:36