Configuring Heap dump analysis tool

Heap Hero tool uses its internal parsing engine to analyze the heap dumps. Certain engineers prefer to use Eclipse MAT to analyze the heap dumps rather than HeapHero internal parsing engine. To facilitate them, HeapHero can be configured to use Eclipse MAT for parsing the heap dumps. 

HeapHero can parse heap dumps in one of the following 3 options:

1. HeapHero internal engine 

or 

2. Eclipse MAT 

or 

3. Both HeapHero Internal Engine and Eclipse MAT

In this article let’s see how to configure HeapHero in the above-mentioned options.

a. HeapHero Internal Engine

 By default, HeapHero uses its internal engine to analyze the heap dump. To enable this option, you don’t have to do anything.

b. Eclipse MAT

 If you want HeapHero to use Eclipse MAT to analyze the heap dumps the follow the below-mentioned steps:

1. Download and install Eclipse MAT in the machine where yCrash server is running. Let’s say you have install it in the folder ‘/opt/tools/eclipse-mat-1.9’

 2. In the launch script (i.e. ‘launch-heaphero.sh’ in the old version or ‘launch.sh’ in the new version) pass the system property ‘matHome’ specifying the location where Eclipse MAT tool is installed.

 -DmatHome=/opt/tools/eclipse-mat-1.9

c. HeapHero and Eclipse MAT

You can also configure HeapHero to analyze heap dumps using both it’s internal engine and Eclipse MAT. When you launch the HeapHero in this mode, you will notice the ‘HeapHero – Eclipse MAT’ toggle button in the heap analysis report page (as shown in the below image).

Fig: Heap analysis through Eclipse MAT and Heap Hero

If you would like to analyze your heap dumps through both the tools, then follow the below steps:

1. Download and install Eclipse MAT in the machine where yCrash server is running. Let’s say you install it in the folder ‘/opt/tools/eclipse-mat-1.9’

 2. In the launch script (i.e. ‘launch-heaphero.sh’ in the old version or ‘launch.sh’ in the new version) pass the system property ‘matHome’ specifying the location where Eclipse MAT tool is installed.

Example:

 -DmatHome=/opt/tools/eclipse-mat-1.9

3. In the same launch script pass the system property ‘hdParser’ with value ‘dual. i.e.

 -DheapParser=dual