Mike's Java Profiler 00.10 Release Notes

I had intended that this release would be larger, but I have had limited ambition to work on MJP. The main reasons for my lack of ambition are

MJP's current features serve my personal needs.
The replacement for the underlying API that MJP uses to collect data, JVMPI, has arrived in the form of java.lang.instrumentation.
There has been very little user demand.
I've lost interest in the project.

However, this release does include a pair of important bug fixes that have been bugging me for a while. The most important one eliminates the limitation that prevented the environment from being passed to child processes launched from MJP. See the change log for details.

Distribution Files

mjp-00.10-win32.tar.gz	Gzipped tar file of precompiled MJP components for Windows NT/2000/XP that requires some manual installation steps.
mjp-00.10-win32.msi	Windows Installer file for Windows NT/2000/XP that provides a standard Windows setup program GUI to guide installation.
mjp-00.10-i386-linux.tar.gz	Gzipped tar file of precompiled MJP components for i386 Linux that requires some manual installation steps.

Source code is available via CVS.

Supported Platforms

The MJP 00.10 profiler agent has been tested on the following platforms:

OS	Compiled With	JRE
Windows 2000 SP4	gcc 3.3.1 -mno-cygwin	Sun JDK 1.3.1-b24
Windows 2000 SP4	gcc 3.3.1 -mno-cygwin	Sun JDK 1.4.0-b92
Windows 2000 SP4	gcc 3.3.1 -mno-cygwin	Sun JDK 1.4.1_01-b01
Windows 2000 SP4	gcc 3.3.1 -mno-cygwin	Sun JDK 1.4.2_02-b03
Windows 2000 SP4	gcc 3.3.1 -mno-cygwin	Sun JDK 1.4.2_03-b02
Windows XP	gcc 3.3.1 -mno-cygwin	Sun JDK 1.4.1_01-b01
Red Hat Linux 9.0	gcc 3.2.2	Sun JDK 1.4.2_03-b02

The MJP 00.10 GUI has been tested on the following platforms:

OS	JRE
Windows 2000 SP4	Sun JDK 1.4.0-b92
Windows 2000 SP4	Sun JDK 1.4.1_01-b01
Windows 2000 SP4	Sun JDK 1.4.2_02-b03
Windows 2000 SP4	Sun JDK 1.4.2_03-b02
Windows XP	Sun JDK 1.4.1_01-b01
Red Hat Linux 9.0	Sun JDK 1.4.2_03-b02

Note that I don't have a enough time to test MJP thoroughly in every configuration, so most of the testing is done on the configuration I happen to be using right before the release. In particular, testing on Linux is sparse because I rarely do any Java development on that platform. I welcome contributions by others in the form of confirmed working configurations.

Known Problems and Limitations

The online help viewer does not display many web pages correctly.

The JavaHelp HTML viewer leaves a lot to be desired. Until a better viewer is found, the MJP online help will be rough around the edges. If you avoid following external links, you should avoid most of the problems.

The index search in the online help viewer never returns any matches.

No online help index yet exists, so there is nothing to match. Use the full text search in the mean time.

Samples mode fails to report some information.

There is a known bug in Sun's JVM that causes the call stack to appear empty when the thread is sleeping. See http://developer.java.sun.com/developer/bugParade/bugs/4860655.html for more information about the bug. As of JDK 1.4.2_03, the bug is still not fixed. The bug causes MJP to not charge samples to threads that are sleeping. Obviously this will throw off the results considerably.