Object Mentor Blog: Generic Java Agent Registry

Generic Java Agent Registry

Brett Schuchert — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 22:44:00 -0600

I’m writing a Java Agent for the first time. Why? I’m interested in using this tool called ConTest from IBM. It was originally written during JDK 1.3 days and now it requires JDK 1.4. It instruments class files looking for code that uses concurrent constructs such as synchronized blocks and inserts code to monitor and play that code back in ways that will more likely expose concurrent problems.

What’s the problem?

It was written in the days when we would use a pre-processing stage to instrument code and then execute tests. This is fine if I wanted to work at the command line and use ant/maven to build. However, I want to work in an IDE that makes running unit tests easy (Eclipse, though they all do it now). But if I have to remember to instrument my classes before running my tests, that leads to human error. I don’t want that, I want to just run my unit tests and have my classes dynamically instrumented. (This is not speculation, this comes from working in a group consisting of multiple teams, all of which were using some Aspects written using AspectJ and running unit tests in Eclipse – when we introduced dynamic instrumentation – pre JDK 1.5 and even working in WebSphere 5.x), it improved productivity.

What about a plug-in? Sure, there’s one for Eclipse but I’ve not been able to download it. It probably works fine – after a class is compiled, it gets instrumented – but if I’m able to write a simple Java Agent, I can create a JVM configuration with a few parameters and every time I run my tests, viola, dynamic instrumentation with only a little one-time environment configuration. Also, I don’t have to worry about waiting for a plug-in update to continue using the tool.

Will my tests run slower? Probably, but until I know how much slower, I’m willing to risk it. (I’ve used dynamic instrumentation when running over 1,000 tests on a workspace with > 1 Million lines of code, it was fine.) If it’s an issue, I can imagine using a combination of annotations and the Java agent. Something like:

@TestInstrument
public class SomeClassThatUsesThreading {}

This would allow the Java Agent to only instrument some classes, rather than all classes. This could cause problems if I forget the annotation, but it’s an option if speed is an issue.

I would not do that unless it was necessary. First, most of my tests would be testing code that is not thread-related. Those tests would not require instrumentation. The tests that require instrumentation, would be somewhere else, and I’d run them with a different frequency; I’d run them longer, with more configurations and iterations, to increase my chances of finding threading-related issues.

There’s another option. Copy what ConTest is already doing using AOP. I tried, and I cannot select the correct point-cuts using traditional point-cut syntax – try selecting synchronized blocks and then every line within the block, that’s not a typical point-cut usage scenario. I considered a combination of hand instrumentation and AOP – it’ll work but it makes the code ugly. I even considered using asm or cglib directly and at that point I knew it was more time than I wanted to spend when the developers of ConTest have years of experience instrumenting classes.

Anyway, I’m hoping the team working on this tool will publish an API soon so I can give that a try. They mentioned they would at some point.

If you want more information on writing a Java Agent (and the class that actually registeres it), have a look at Brett’s Java Agent Notes.

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