Hey everyone,
I’ve been using IntelliJ for Java development, but it’s feeling a bit heavy on system resources lately. I'm looking for a lightweight open-source setup (or editor) that still offers solid feature parity—good code completion, refactoring, and debugging.
For anyone doing Java work on a lighter stack:
What setup or extensions (like VS Code/VSCodium or Eclipse) are you using?
Any hidden gems or LSP setups you'd recommend?
Appreciate any suggestions!
Top comments (1)
VS Code with the Extension Pack for Java (bundles Language Support for Java by Red Hat, Debugger for Java, Test Runner for Java, and Maven for Java) covers most of what you'd want — completion, refactoring, and debugging all run through the Eclipse JDT language server underneath, so the completion quality is close to what you'd get in Eclipse itself, just without IntelliJ's memory footprint.
One tuning tip if it still feels heavy: the JDT language server has its own JVM args separate from VS Code's, controlled by the
java.jdt.ls.vmargssetting. Bumping or capping-Xmxthere (rather than assuming it's tied to VS Code's own memory use) is usually where the actual savings are.If you want to go even lighter than that, Eclipse itself (not through VS Code) is worth a second look now — it's the same JDT engine minus VS Code's own overhead, which sometimes nets out lower on RAM than VS Code + the extension pack, even though it feels heavier at first glance.