The Memory Analyzer is delivered as
- stand-alone RCP version via eclipse.org download server.
- feature to be installed into an Eclipse IDE installation using an update site.
Binary and source compatibility is expected for the Snapshot and Parser API.
The Memory Analyzer is prepared to be translated. Translation relevant String constants are externalized into resource bundles.
The Memory Analyzer requires Java 5 and runs on Eclipse 3.4 and greater. A stand-alone version is provided on the download server which is build currently with Eclipse 3.7.
New Features
These are some new features that we would like to finish for the 1.2.0 release
- Ensure that Memory Analyzer works fine with Eclipse 4.2(364579)
As the Juno simultaneous release is going to be based on Eclipse 4.2, Memory Analyzer has to be working properly when installed as a feature in an Eclipse 4.2 IDE.
Providing a standalone MAT version based on Eclipse 4.2 will be nice to have, but it has lower priority. - Add support for UseCompressedOops(346317)
On x64 platforms many of the JVMs offer the possibility to specify that object pointers used by the VM for objects are not 64 bit. HPROF dumps do not contain information if the flag is set or not, therefore object sizes calculated by MAT are incorrect for such heap dumps. We can attempt to find or guess this information on our own, using object addresses calculation for example.
Documentation Improvement
The Memory Analyzer documentation is available as (a) help plug-in, (b) WIKI pages and (c) blog postings for special topics.
- Provide a "developer guide" for extending Memory Analyzer in Wiki
We are working on a set of pages describing what the different possibilities to extend MAT are, and how such extensions could be written. - Review the existing documentation
Currently existing documentation should be reviewed and outdated parts have to be adjusted. - Document new features
The newly developed features have to be properly documented. - Publish the Help Plug-in contents on the eclipse.org Page.
Additionally delivering the help content via web pages will make them searchable via search engines. This should attract new users to the tool.
Building A Community
A vibrant community is essential for the long term health of any project. The Memory Analyzer is in a difficult position, because it is a niche tool which not only requires some significant domain knowledge about memory analysis but also is utilized only sporadically during the development of big applications.
- Participate in the Eclipse Simultaneous Release.
- Be responsive to questions posted to the newsgroup and Bugzilla reports.