The Visual GC Integration Module

Visual GC Integration module integrates the famous Visual GC tool into the NetBeans IDE. Visual GC tool attaches to an instrumented HotSpot JVM and collects and graphically displays garbage collection, class loader, and HotSpot compiler performance data.

When using the NetBeans integration, a new menu item Window | Visual GC is added. It opens the Visual GC window inside the IDE, and prompts the user to enter the PID of a local or remote Java process to connect to and observe.

Please note: The module requires that the IDE and instrumented HotSpot JVM runs on JDK 5.0. If you run the IDE on previous version of JDK, please update to JDK 5.0.

News!

December/19/2006: Visual GC integration 1.1.1 for NetBeans 5.0 and newer was released. This release fixes problem with disapearing Tools menu, which was introduced in 1.0.1 version.

December/15/2006: Visual GC integration 1.0.1 for NetBeans 5.0 and newer was released. This release is based on jvmstat 3.0 b07. It will work with JDK 6 and 5.0 (and should be able to monitor 1.4.2 and 1.4.1 JVMs too). It needs to run on JDK 5.0 or newer.

April/26/2005: Visual GC integration 0.2 (Milestone 2) for NetBeans 4.0 and newer released. This release adds a combo box with JVMs running on the local machine to avoid having to use jps separately to obtain the PID.

April/21/2005: Visual GC integration Milestone 1 for NetBeans 4.1, 4.0 released.

Download & Install - Visual GC integration 1.1.1

1. If you do not have NetBeans IDE installed yet, download it here.
2. Make sure the IDE runs on JDK 5.0. You can use "-jdkhome < dir >" command line parameter to force it to start using a specific Java version.
3. Download the module here.
4. Start NetBeans IDE 5.0/5.5 and go to Tools | Update Center.
5. In the wizard that opens select "Install Manually Downloaded Modules" and click Next.
6. Select the downloaded NBM file.
7. Finish the wizard by following its instructions.
8. The Visual GC can be launched using the Window | Visual GC menu item.
9. Please note: On Windows systems with FAT/FAT32 filesystem, the jps tool is unable to automatically determine the list of running VMs, and the combo selector will stay empty even though there are JVMs running. In this case you can still connect to JVM if you are able to determine its PID from the Task manager and enter it manually. To be able to see the applications to be monitored automatically, you can either start them with the -XX:+PerfBypassFileSystemCheck JVM switch, or convert your filesystem to NTFS. For more details see the jvmstat FAQ.

For help with using Visual GC check the Visual GC docs.

Mailing Lists

• To subscribe to the user discussion mailing list users@profiler.netbeans.org, send blank e-mail to users-subscribe@profiler.netbeans.org
• If you prefer to receive infrequent announcements about new releases, you can subscribe to the low traffic announce-only mailing list profiler-announce@netbeans.org - send a blank mail to profiler-announce-subscribe@netbeans.org to subscribe.
• To send a direct feedback without subscribing to any list, you can reach us at feedback@profiler.netbeans.org

Screenshots

Click the thumbnails to see full size images.

Starting the Visual GC tool inside NetBeans

Visual GC running inside NetBeans