December 2019 – Marcus Hirt

Oracle just released their GA build of JDK Mission Control 7.0.0. I, of course, had to download it to give it a spin.

Here are my main takeaways:

Compared to the early access builds, it no longer comes with an embedded JDK. This is actually nice, since you can run it on whichever JDK you’d like. That said, it does require you to have a JDK already installed. Since local auto-discovery of locally running JVMs will not work unless running on a JDK (it does not work on a JRE), it also makes it a little bit easier to get things wrong.
You may want to configure the jmc.ini file to point to a JDK manually. Simply add a -vm entry just before the -vmargs, like so:
```
...
--launcher.appendVmargs
-vm
C:\Java\JDKs\jdk-11.0.5\bin
-vmargs
-XX:+UnlockDiagnosticVMOptions
...
```
Oracle has put up a properly configured update site. This means that in Oracle’s builds of Mission Control, there are additional plug-ins that can be installed by going to Help | Install New Software…
Everything, except for the Oracle specific optional plug-ins from the update site, is released under the very permissive UPL license. The Oracle ones are under a separate group named Mission Control (Oracle) on the update site, so they are easy to spot.
Working my way back from the updatesite.properties file in the application, I found an Eclipse update site available here:
https://download.oracle.com/technology/products/missioncontrol/updatesites/openjdk/7.0.0/ide/
(Edit: After posting this blog, I noticed that reading the release notes would have been easier. ;))

TL;DR

Oracle releases a solid first (though a bit delayed) release of JMC 7. A notable difference to Oracle’s early access builds, is that there is no longer an embedded JDK. A notable difference to other JMC releases is that there are published update sites – both for the stand alone application, and for installing it all into the Eclipse IDE.

So, in short, yay!