Sidekick Java Agent
Table of Contents
Sidekick is a live application debugger that lets you troubleshoot your applications while they keep on running.
Add dynamic logs and put non-breaking breakpoints in your running application without the need of stopping & redeploying.
Sidekick Open Source is here to allow self-hosting and make live debugging more accessible. Built for everyone who needs extra information from their running applications.
Sidekick has two major actions; Tracepoints & Logpoints.
- A tracepoint is a non-breaking remote breakpoint. In short, it takes a snapshot of the variables when the code hits that line.
- Logpoints open the way for dynamic(on-demand) logging to Sidekick users. Replacing traditional logging with dynamic logging has the potential to lower stage sizes, costs, and time for log searching while adding the ability to add new logpoints without editing the source code, redeploying, or restarting the application.
Supported runtimes: Java, Python, Node.js
To learn more about Sidekick features and capabilities, see our web page.
Sidekick Java agent allows you to inject tracepoints (non-breaking breakpoints) and log points dynamically to capture call stack snapshots (with variables) and add log messages on the fly without code modification, re-build and re-deploy. So it helps you, your team, and your organization to reduce MTTR (Minimum Time to Repair/Resolve).
To achieve this, the Sidekick Java agent has nothing to do with JDWP (Java Debug Wire Protocol), as it doesn't suspend the code execution, but hooks into code execution at the application layer by bytecode instrumentation. Under the hood, Sidekick agent
- injects its hook call into the specified line at the bytecode level
- intercepts the code execution just before the specified line
- captures call stack snapshot (for tracepoint) or prints dynamic log message (for log point)
- create events to be sent asynchronously
- and then lets the code execution continue
Here, to keep Sidekick agent overhead at a minimum (sub-millisecond on average), in addition to non-blocking event publishing, we apply many performance improvements like async snapshot taking, async call stack collecting, and fast serialization by reducing redundant memory copies.
The advantage of Sidekick over classical APM solutions is that, Sidekick
- can debug and trace any location (your code base or 3rd party dependency) in your application, not just the external (DB, API, etc ...) calls like APM solutions
- has zero overhead when you don't have any tracepoint or log point but APMs have always
- doesn't produce too much garbage data because it collects data only at the certain points you specified as long as that point (tracepoint/logpoint) is active
JDK 8+ is supported Java (8+), Kotlin (1.3+) and Scala (2.10+) JVM languages are supported
Download the latest Sidekick agent from this link repo
Agent configuration : https://docs.runsidekick.com/installation/installing-agents/java/configuration#configure-the-agent
Source bundling: https://docs.runsidekick.com/installation/installing-agents/java/source-bundling
- Java 8+
- Maven 3.x
mvn clean package
To report a bug or request a feature, create a GitHub Issue. Please ensure someone else has not created an issue for the same topic.
Reach out on the Discord. A fellow community member or Sidekick engineer will be happy to help you out.