Elephant Tracks 2.0

Elephant Tracks is a garbage collection tracing tool for java programs. For an arbitrary java program, it will produce a trace file with the following features:

• Produces an in-order trace of object allocation, death, method entry, method exit, and pointer update events.
• Time measured by method entry/exit
• Uses the Merlin Algorithm by Hertz et. Al to compute object death times accurate to the nearest method call/exit, described here
• Works on most java code (now including native methods)
• Connects to any JVM that supports JVMTI

Known Issues

• Not compatabile with Java 1.7 (does work with 1.6)
• A bug prevents operation with HotSpot 1.6 ("Unable to find class ElephantTracks"). The work around is to use IBM's J9.

Publications

• Elephant Tracks: Portable Production of Complete And Precise GC Traces. ISMM 2013. Available here
• Tool Demonstration: Elephant Tracks: generating program traces with object death records. PPPJ 2011. Available here

Building, Running Using