Weekend Project: Thread Dump Viewer for Eclipse

A couple of weeks ago, one of our users reported that Eclipse consistently froze when executing some action. I was hoping that Eclipse would have an editor where I can open the thread dump I got and navigate, through hyperlinks, from stack traces to source code. The closest thing I found was the “Java Stack Trace Console,” which provides hyperlinking to source code. It would have been nice if there is a specialized editor that provides the following features, besides code navigation:

• an Outline View that shows the threads by name (with icons representing their state) and any deadlocks found
• some basic syntax highlighting to make reading easier
• ability to collapse blocks (e.g. a thread or stack trace) to minimize noise
• navigation to thread definitions from references (e.g. a deadlock)

BTW, IntelliJ IDEA provides something somehow close to what I’m asking for since 2008! 2008!

In addition, I didn’t want a tool that analises a thread dump for me (e.g. TDA or the IBM one.) So far, I haven’t seen a thread dump that is that hard to read.

Of course I had to scratch my own itch! This past weekend I finally had time to write my own “Thread Dump Viewer.” It is an editor that provides everything I described. I was able to write a working editor in a matter of hours, using Xtext. The key was getting the grammar right. I spent an additional couple of hours making it “prettier.”

Here is a screenshot of the editor (click to enlarge.)

Here is a demo showing off the features of the “Thread Dump Viewer.”

I created this tool for my own use. I haven’t open-sourced the code or made the plug-in publicly available simply because I don’t know if anybody else would find this tool useful. If you do, please leave a comment.