Analyze that!
I remember a few weeks ago seeing a message about the Memory Analyzer project proposal. Some guys from SAP were going to open source some of their tooling to analyze Java heap dumps. I didn’t think much about it at the time other than “Hey, that’s probably a good idea”. The other day however, Andreas Buchen, the proposed project lead contacted me about being a mentor so I took a deeper look at what they are proposing.
There is a bunch of info on the SAP Wiki and Andreas has summarized it well in a newsgroup post. This is really cool! Their tool allows you to do all manner of queries and introspection of heaps. You can look for leaks (why is that object still there?), check memory consumption (aka retained size), create your own queries, etc.
The real kicker for me was the classloader relative searching. Under the covers, Equinox makes a classloader for every bundle. So searches by classloader are just a step away from searches by bundle. This puts the tooling in a much better context for Eclipse developers and, for example, lets you figure out what your bundle is doing with memory etc.
The other thing that is cool is its scalability. They routinely work on multi-GB dumps and have a whole range of instant queries and fast approximations.
The Memory Analyzer project is quite niche and may not attract that many developers (there is lots of potential for people adding extensions) but as part of the broader suite of JDT and TPTP tooling it is a big win and will attract lots of users. I encourage you to check out the proposal and show your support on the newsgroup. Also, you might want to attend their talk at EclipseCon.
p.s., Don’t forget early registration for EclipseCon ends on Feb 14. Spend your money on your loved ones not late registration for the conference.