Commands are the invokable objects in JSwat that perform some kind of operation. Some example commands are: attach, stop, step, disablegc, print, and threads. Below is a brief discussion of how to write new commands for JSwat, including what features are available to commands.
All commands must subclass the JSwatCommand class,
defined in the com.bluemarsh.jswat.command package.
JSwatCommand provides some basic functionality needed
for all JSwat commands. Each JSwat command class is named using the
name of the command as the prefix, followed by the
"Command" suffix. For example, the new
'friday' command class must be named
"fridayCommand" and placed in the
com.bluemarsh.jswat.command package. When the user
invokes 'friday' at the JSwat command prompt, the
CommandManager class will find the
fridayCommand class, create an instance of it, and call
its "perform" method.
One instance of each command is created per instance of a JSwat session.
JSwat commands can do just about anything any ordinary Java code
can do. All of the work of a JSwat command is carried out in its
perform method. This method is given several parameters
which enable the command to perform its task. The first parameter is
the Session object running the command. The Session
provides access to most everything the command could ever want,
including threads, context manager, event handler,
CommandManager, etc. The second argument is a
CommandArguments which provides the command arguments.
For instance, if the friday command took two arguments,
a thread ID and an object reference, those would be passed in the
args parameter. It is up to the friday
command to parse the strings and resolve the arguments. The third and
final argument to the perform method is the
Log instance to which the command may write messages.
This is the same log as the one returned from
Session.getStatusLog().
To make the new command available to users, edit the file
classes/com/bluemarsh/jswat/command/Bundle.properties as
described below.
commandList property.Insert your new entries in alphabetical order so they are easy to locate.
To connect the new command into the interactive help system, add
entries to the help.properties file in the command
package.
When the new command is ready for general use, write a unit test
case for it. If the command requires an active session and/or
arguments, add the test case to the appropriate test case suites. See
the examples in the
test/junit/classes/com/bluemarsh/jswat/command
directory.