A suite of programs for generating static and dynamic call graphs in Java.
- javacg-static: Reads classes from a jar file, walks down the method bodies and prints a table of caller-caller relationships.
- javacg-dynamic: Runs as a Java agent and instruments the methods of a user-defined set of classes in order to track their invocations. At JVM exit, prints a table of caller-callee relationships, along with a number of calls
The java-callgraph package is build with maven. Install maven and do:
mvn install
This will produce a target directory with the following three jars:
- javacg-0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar: This is the standard maven packaged jar with static and dynamic call graph generator classes
javacg-0.1-SNAPSHOT-static.jar: This is an executable jar which includes the static call graph generatorjavacg-0.1-SNAPSHOT-dycg-agent.jar: This is an executable jar which includes the dynamic call graph generator
Instructions for running the callgraph generators
javacg-static accepts as arguments the jars to analyze.
java -jar javacg-0.1-SNAPSHOT-static.jar lib1.jar lib2.jar...
javacg-static produces combined output in the following format:
M:class1:<method1>(arg_types) (typeofcall)class2:<method2>(arg_types)
The line means that method1 of class1 called method2 of class2.
The type of call can have one of the following values (refer to
the JVM specification
for the meaning of the calls):
MforinvokevirtualcallsIforinvokeinterfacecallsOforinvokespecialcallsSforinvokestaticcallsDforinvokedynamiccalls
For invokedynamic calls, it is not possible to infer the argument types.
C:class1 class2
This means that some method(s) in class1 called some method(s) in class2.
javacg-dynamic uses
javassist to insert probes
at method entry and exit points. To be able to analyze a class javassist must
resolve all dependent classes at instrumentation time. To do so, it reads
classes from the JVM's boot classloader. By default, the JVM sets the boot
classpath to use Java's default classpath implementation (rt.jar on
Win/Linux, classes.jar on the Mac). The boot classpath can be extended using
the -Xbootclasspath option, which works the same as the traditional
-classpath option. It is advisable for javacg-dynamic to work as expected,
to set the boot classpath to the same, or an appropriate subset, entries as the
normal application classpath.
Moreover, since instrumenting all methods will produce huge callgraphs which
are not necessarily helpful (e.g. it will include Java's default classpath
entries), javacg-dynamic includes support for restricting the set of classes
to be instrumented through include and exclude statements. The options are
appended to the -javaagent argument and has the following format
-javaagent:javacg-dycg-agent.jar="incl=mylib.*,mylib2.*,java.nio.*;excl=java.nio.charset.*"
The example above will instrument all classes under the the mylib, mylib2 and
java.nio namespaces, except those that fall under the java.nio.charset namespace.
java
-Xbootclasspath:/System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Classes/classes.jar:mylib.jar
-javaagent:javacg-0.1-SNAPSHOT-dycg-agent.jar="incl=mylib.*;"
-classpath mylib.jar mylib.Mainclass
javacg-dynamic produces two kinds of output. On the standard output, it
writes method call pairs as shown below:
class1:method1 class2:method2 numcalls
It also produces a file named calltrace.txt in which it writes the entry
and exit timestamps for methods, thereby turning javacg-dynamic into
a poor man's profiler. The format is the following:
<>[stack_depth][thread_id]fqdn.class:method=timestamp_nanos
The output line starts with a < or > depending on whether it is a method
entry or exit. It then writes the stack depth, thread id and the class and
method name, followed by a timestamp. The provided process_trace.rb
script processes the callgraph output to generate total time per method
information.
The following examples instrument the
Dacapo benchmark suite to produce dynamic call graphs.
The Dacapo benchmarks come in a single big jar archive that contains all dependency
libraries. To build the boot class path required for the javacg-dyn program,
extract the dacapo.jar to a directory: all the required libraries can be found
in the jar directory.
Running the batik Dacapo benchmark:
java -Xbootclasspath:/System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Classes/classes.jar:jar/batik-all.jar:jar/xml-apis-ext.jar -javaagent:target/javacg-0.1-SNAPSHOT-dycg-agent.jar="incl=org.apache.batik.*,org.w3c.*;" -jar dacapo-9.12-bach.jar batik -s small |tail -n 10
[...]
org.apache.batik.dom.AbstractParentNode:appendChild org.apache.batik.dom.AbstractParentNode:fireDOMNodeInsertedEvent 6270<br/>
org.apache.batik.dom.AbstractParentNode:fireDOMNodeInsertedEvent org.apache.batik.dom.AbstractDocument:getEventsEnabled 6280<br/>
org.apache.batik.dom.AbstractParentNode:checkAndRemove org.apache.batik.dom.AbstractNode:getOwnerDocument 6280<br/>
org.apache.batik.dom.util.DoublyIndexedTable:put org.apache.batik.dom.util.DoublyIndexedTable$Entry:DoublyIndexedTable$Entry 6682<br/>
org.apache.batik.dom.util.DoublyIndexedTable:put org.apache.batik.dom.util.DoublyIndexedTable:hashCode 6693<br/>
org.apache.batik.dom.AbstractElement:invalidateElementsByTagName org.apache.batik.dom.AbstractElement:getNodeType 7198<br/>
org.apache.batik.dom.AbstractElement:invalidateElementsByTagName org.apache.batik.dom.AbstractDocument:getElementsByTagName 14396<br/>
org.apache.batik.dom.AbstractElement:invalidateElementsByTagName org.apache.batik.dom.AbstractDocument:getElementsByTagNameNS 28792<br/>
Running the lucene Dacapo benchmark:
java -Xbootclasspath:/System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Classes/classes.jar:jar/lucene-core-2.4.jar:jar/luindex.jar -javaagent:target/javacg-0.1-SNAPSHOT-dycg-agent.jar="incl=org.apache.lucene.*;" -jar dacapo-9.12-bach.jar luindex -s small |tail -n 10
[...]
org.apache.lucene.analysis.Token:setTermBuffer org.apache.lucene.analysis.Token:growTermBuffer 43449<br/>
org.apache.lucene.analysis.CharArraySet:getSlot org.apache.lucene.analysis.CharArraySet:getHashCode 43472<br/>
org.apache.lucene.analysis.CharArraySet:getSlot org.apache.lucene.analysis.CharArraySet:equals 46107<br/>
org.apache.lucene.index.FreqProxTermsWriter:appendPostings org.apache.lucene.store.IndexOutput:writeVInt 46507<br/>
org.apache.lucene.store.IndexInput:readVInt org.apache.lucene.index.ByteSliceReader:readByte 63927<br/>
org.apache.lucene.index.TermsHashPerField:writeVInt org.apache.lucene.index.TermsHashPerField:writeByte 63927<br/>
org.apache.lucene.store.IndexOutput:writeVInt org.apache.lucene.store.BufferedIndexOutput:writeByte 94239<br/>
org.apache.lucene.index.TermsHashPerField:quickSort org.apache.lucene.index.TermsHashPerField:comparePostings 107343<br/>
org.apache.lucene.analysis.Token:termBuffer org.apache.lucene.analysis.Token:initTermBuffer 162115<br/>
org.apache.lucene.analysis.Token:termLength org.apache.lucene.analysis.Token:initTermBuffer 205554<br/>
- The static call graph generator does not account for methods invoked via reflection.
- The dynamic call graph generator will not work reliably (or at all) for multithreaded programs
- The dynamic call graph generator does not handle exceptions very well, so some methods might appear as having never returned
Georgios Gousios gousiosg@gmail.com