How can I analyze a heap dump in IntelliJ? (memory leak)

Question

I have generated a heap dump from my java application which has been running for some days with the jmap tool -> this results in a large binary heap dump file.

How can I perform memory analysis of this heap dump within IntellIJ IDEA?

I know that there are tools for Eclipse and Netbeans but I would rather use IDEA if possible.

The basic results of the analysis would tell me the number of instances of each object in memory, per-class, to allow me to be able to start debugging memory leaks.

Answer 1

The best thing out there is Memory Analyzer (MAT), IntelliJ does not have any bundled heap dump analyzer.

Answer 2

I would like to update the answers above to 2018 and say to use both VisualVM and Eclipse MAT.

How to use:

VisualVM is used for live monitoring and dump heap. You can also analyze the heap dumps there with great power, however MAT have more capabilities (such as automatic analysis to find leaks) and therefore, I read the VisualVM dump output (.hprof file) into MAT.

---

---

Get VisualVM:

Download VisualVM here: https://visualvm.github.io/

You also need to download the plugin for Intellij:

Then you'll see in intellij another 2 new orange icons:

Once you run your app with an orange one, in VisualVM you'll see your process on the left, and data on the right. Sit some time and learn this tool, it is very powerful:

---

---

Get Eclipse's Memory Analysis Tool (MAT) as a standalone:

Download here: https://www.eclipse.org/mat/downloads.php

And this is how it looks:

Hope it helps!