Eclipse: debugging a software initiated process

Question

I programmatically execute a java process through another Java process in eclipse:

Process process = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(command, envp, dir); 

Is there a way to tell eclipse to debug a child process?

As an alternative, I could solve this problem by combining several startup configurations, that is, start process A, when starting process B - provided that B can be started in debug mode.

Answer 1

If you use the Remote Debugging feature in Eclipse, you can specify it on any JVM instance. You just need to make sure that each instance is prompted to use a unique JDWP port. So you can do it from the command line:

 java -Xdebug -Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket,address=8998,server=y 

So, change the “address” to whatever port you want, then you can specify Eclipse on that port. Here is some more info:

http://java.dzone.com/articles/how-debug-remote-java-applicat

Answer 2

Add a command line parameter to the child process as follows:

 -Xdebug -Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket,server=y,address=9999 

(you can use a different port number than 9999, it is up to you, but it is best to choose a number above 1024)

Then, in Eclipse, create a debug configuration such as "Remote Java Application". Set the host as localhost and the port is 9999.

There is a lot of additional information in this developerWorks article.

EDIT: By the way, for more flexibility when specifying the command line and environment of your child process, use the java.lang.ProcessBuilder class instead of Runtime.exec(...) .