Ask HN: Are there any replay tools for Java suitable for production?

5 points by bestCauliflower ↗ HN
We have a problem with the reproduction of bug reports where I work. Most of the times it's due to the report being badly written, so what we do then is to take the customers database and just develop the fix using that. I've been wondering if there are better ways to do this, besides improving the quality of the reports.

I found this article that describes replay tools that record an audit log which you can then use to reproduce exactly each case: https://dzone.com/articles/if-you-cant-reproduce-bug-you The closest example I could find for Java was Chronon, but it doesn't seem to work like what is described in the article. I just need a log of what are the inputs that lead to a bug, a recorder of the whole JVM seems excessive.

2 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 12.0 ms ] thread
Have you looked into error reporting solutions? These can automatically capture uncaught Java exceptions within an application and send a crash report with relevant metadata (stacktrace, user actions, request info, etc).

Disclaimer: I work for Bugsnag, who offer such a solution

Try Oracle's Java Flight Recorder. Was/is commercial, but is becoming part of OpenJDK 11.