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Valgrind VS VisualVM

Compare Valgrind VS VisualVM and see what are their differences

Valgrind logo Valgrind

Valgrind is an instrumentation framework for building dynamic analysis tools.

VisualVM logo VisualVM

VisualVM is a visual tool integrating several commandline JDK tools and lightweight profiling...
  • Valgrind Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-01-15
  • VisualVM Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-10-18

Valgrind features and specs

  • Comprehensive Memory Debugging
    Valgrind provides thorough memory debugging and memory leak detection, identifying use-after-free and other memory errors in applications.
  • Profiling Capabilities
    In addition to identifying memory issues, Valgrind offers basic CPU profiling, allowing developers to assess performance bottlenecks.
  • No Source Code Changes Required
    Valgrind can be used without altering the source code, making it easy to integrate into existing projects for debugging purposes.
  • Supports Multiple Languages
    Valgrind supports a variety of programming languages, including C, C++, and others, making it versatile across different codebases.
  • Wide Platform Support
    It is available on many platforms, including Linux and macOS, providing flexibility to developers working in different environments.

Possible disadvantages of Valgrind

  • Performance Overhead
    Valgrind significantly slows down program execution, often by a factor of 10 to 30 times, which can make testing large applications more time-consuming.
  • Limited Windows Support
    Valgrind has no native Windows support, requiring developers to use alternate solutions or run it in a Linux environment.
  • Complexity with Multithreading
    Debugging multithreaded applications can be complex, and Valgrind's tools may struggle with race conditions and other threading issues.
  • Heavy Resource Usage
    Running applications under Valgrind can consume significant system resources, impacting other processes and the overall system performance.
  • Steep Learning Curve
    The tool has a steep learning curve, especially for users new to debugging tools, which can require additional time for proficiency.

VisualVM features and specs

  • Comprehensive Monitoring
    VisualVM allows developers to monitor and troubleshoot Java applications through various data points like JVM-level statistics, thread monitoring, and memory inspection.
  • Integration with JDK
    As a part of the JDK, VisualVM is easy to access and use without the need for additional installations or configurations.
  • Lightweight
    Being lightweight, VisualVM does not add significant overhead to the system and can be used effectively in development without impacting performance.
  • User-friendly Interface
    VisualVM provides an intuitive and graphical interface that makes it easier for users to analyze the performance metrics and diagnose issues.
  • Plugin Support
    VisualVM supports plugins, allowing users to extend its functionalities according to specific requirements and use cases.
  • Cross-platform
    As a Java-based tool, VisualVM can be run on any platform that supports Java, making it highly versatile.

Possible disadvantages of VisualVM

  • Limited to Java Applications
    VisualVM can only be used with Java applications, which can be a limitation for mixed-environment monitoring needs.
  • Limited Features for Enterprise
    While excellent for basic monitoring, VisualVM might lack some features and scalability needed for large enterprise-grade monitoring and performance analysis.
  • Steep Learning Curve for Advanced Features
    Despite its user-friendly interface, some advanced features and customizations can be complex and may require a steep learning curve.
  • Infrequent Updates
    The update cycle for VisualVM can be slower compared to commercial alternatives, leading to potential lag in addressing bugs or adding new features.
  • Resource Usage
    Running VisualVM for in-depth analysis on the same machine as the application it monitors could potentially affect the application’s performance due to resource consumption.

Valgrind videos

Detecting Memory Leaks With Valgrind

More videos:

  • Review - Finding memory errors with Valgrind
  • Review - sparcv9 New architecture to be supported by Valgrind

VisualVM videos

Java Heap Dump Analysis - VisualVM Tutorial

More videos:

  • Tutorial - OutOfMemoryError Java Heap Space Fix - Heap Dump Analysis VisualVM Tutorial

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Valgrind and VisualVM)
Software Development
37 37%
63% 63
IDE
45 45%
55% 55
Resource Profiling And Monitoring
OS & Utilities
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Valgrind should be more popular than VisualVM. It has been mentiond 41 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Valgrind mentions (41)

  • Why does Debian change software?
    Hello, as always: imho (!) I remember this incident - if my memory doesn't trick me: it was openssl which accessed memory it didn't allocated to collect randomness / entropy for key-generation. And valgrind complained about a possible memory-leak - its a profiling-tool with the focus on detecting memory-mgmt problems. * https://valgrind.org/ instead of taking a closer look / trying to understand what exactly went... - Source: Hacker News / 16 days ago
  • Understanding the Odin Programming Language
    Odin has a builtin heap allocator that works the same way you would expect any other high-level language to do memory allocation–it's just that you have to free the memory yourself. Plus, Odin's built in `context` system makes it really easy to change what kind of allocator is used for different sections of code. For my use cases, I've never needed any more than a heap and an arena, detailed in this talk:... - Source: Hacker News / 6 months ago
  • Intel Announces Retirement of CEO Pat Gelsinger
    Dunno, who says a lot of effort was put into Rosetta 2? It's mostly something that was needed in the first few years so you could run Chrome and Photoshop, but those have been ported now. It's mostly useful for running WINE but that's not super common outside games. That said, a binary recompiler has a lot of uses once you have one: https://valgrind.org. - Source: Hacker News / 6 months ago
  • Top 10 Profiler Tools for Optimizing Software Performance in 2024
    Valgrind is an open-source profiling tool suite ideal for debugging and profiling C and C++ applications. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • Use Valgrind in your CI / CD
    Today I will show you how to use Valgrind to easily check for memory leaks on your code inside a GitHub Action. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
View more

VisualVM mentions (23)

  • Streaming data from RDBMS with jooq
    For the purposes of this demo, let’s simply count the number of retrieved rows. The Thread.sleep() is included to give me time to open VisualVM and check the metrics:. - Source: dev.to / almost 4 years ago
  • How to Monitor SQL Performance in Spring Boot
    To track query-level metrics, check out the Hibernate Statistics section. Profiling tools like YourKit or VisualVM can help you analyze key metrics such as:. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • Can java collection be fixed?
    If you're curious, attach VisualVM and watch the RAM usage graph. You'll notice that Java performs garbage collections long before reaching allocating the maximum amount of RAM allocated, and you can't even feel any performance issue in-game. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Items won't drop when either mined or dropped from inventory and new chunks won't load.
    Hangs and deadlocks are significantly harder to debug. A first step is taking a thread dump so you can see what each thread in the JVM is currently trying to do. I like VisualVM for this, you can also use the command-line tools jps -l (to list all Java PIDs) and jstack for taking a thread dump. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Top metrics for Elasticsearch monitoring with Prometheus
    The Java VisualVM project is an advanced dashboard for Memory and CPU monitoring. It features advanced resource visualization, as well as process and thread utilization. - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Valgrind and VisualVM, you can also consider the following products

perf - Perf is a simple app monitoring solution paired with meaningful alerts.

Eclipse Memory Analyzer - The Eclipse Foundation - home to a global community, the Eclipse IDE, Jakarta EE and over 350 open source projects, including runtimes, tools and frameworks.

WPMU DEV - WPMU offers WordPress Plugins, WordPress Themes, WordPress Multisite and BuddyPress Plugins and Themes.

Robot Console - Robot Console is a Message and Event Monitoring Software for IBM i thathas automatic message management, resource monitoring, and log monitoring.

MAMP - MAMP is the abbreviation for Macintosh, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. It is a reliable application with its four components that allows you to access the local PHP server as well as the database server (SQL).

JConsole - Provides information about performance and resource consumption for Java applications.