Manage Memory for permanent generation space (permgen)

If your JDeveloper IDE  is slow, you can increase the memory by: 

Edit the "jdev.conf" file located at path "YOUR_Oracle_Home\jdeveloper\jdev\bin​"

and add following line:

AddVMOptionHotspot  -XX:MaxPermSize=1024M

also you can show the consumed memory and force for garbage collection by adding the following line:

AddVMOption -DMainWindow.MemoryMonitorOn=true

See the file after modifying:

See the change as new bar at Jdeveloper IDE, the arrow points to link that do job for Garbage Collecting:

• Now you are more far from the error: OutOfMemoryError PermGen Space Error.
• Java 8 is moved from PermGen Space to Metaspace.Java Metaspace space setting is to be unbounded (dynamic resize) by default.

•  JDeveloper 12.1.3 in test can be configured to develop/compile against JDK 8, and introduces support for JDK 8 language features.

http://waslleysouza.com.br/en/2014/04/increase-the-performance-of-jdeveloper-11g/
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/jdev/documentation/121300-cert-2164864.html
http://java.dzone.com/articles/java-8-permgen-metaspace
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_virtual_machine