Microsoft open-sources Java garbage collection analyzer

Microsoft’s Java Engineering Team has open-sourced the Microsoft GCToolkit, a set of libraries for examining Java garbage collection (GC) log information.

Readily available on GitHub and available underneath the MIT license, GCToolkit parses log information into discrete functions and has an API for aggregating details from all those functions. Customers can generate arbitrary and elaborate analyses of the point out of managed memory in the JVM, as proven by the Java GC log.

Unveiled in early August, GCToolkit is comprised of 3 Java modules that include the API, GC log file parsers, and a information backplane primarily based on the Vert.x toolkit for constructing reactive purposes on the JVM. The API module is the entry stage into the toolkit, hiding the particulars of making use of the parser and Vert.x to evaluate a GC log file into a handful of approach calls. The parser module is a collection of standard expressions and code created to be a strong GC log parser.

The Vert.x-primarily based messaging backplane tends to make use of two information buses. The very first streams log lines from the GC file. Listeners on this bus are parsers that change details from the details source into functions that stand for possibly a GC cycle or safe and sound stage. These functions then are published on the 2nd information bus. The listeners on this celebration bus then procedure the functions that are of interest to them.

The parser emits discrete JVM functions that make it doable to compose code to capture and evaluate details from all those functions. Facts to be analyzed is dependent on what builders want to look at. GCToolkit has an aggregator/aggregation framework for capturing and examining GC log file details. Code that captures an celebration is termed an aggregator, even though code that analyzes details is termed an aggregation.

Developers fascinated in contributing to GCToolkit can participate in on-line discussions about the challenge. The open-sourcing of Microsoft’s Java GC challenge will come in the wake of the business producing its very own Java distribution, Microsoft Develop of OpenJDK, in Might. The business also has supported Java advancement on the Microsoft Azure cloud.