BTrace Roadmap & Call for Feedback

[jbachorik]

## BTrace Roadmap & Call for Feedback

🚀 BTrace Needs Your Input! 🚀

BTrace is an open-source, dynamic JVM tracing tool that has been helping developers debug and monitor Java applications in production for years. With nearly 6,000 GitHub stars, it's clear that many developers find BTrace useful—but we need your feedback to make it even better! 🙌

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📢 How You Can Help

We’re looking for input from the community on:

• How do you use BTrace? (Production debugging, ad-hoc tracing, integration with JFR, etc.)
• What features would you like to see next?
• Would you be interested in contributing to BTrace development?

If you have ideas, drop a comment in this GitHub Discussion or react to feature requests below! 👇

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🛣 Upcoming Features – Vote & Comment!

Below are some of the potential features under consideration. If any of these interest you, please react with 👍 or comment to let us know!

High-Priority Features

✅ Collection & Array Processing in a Safe Manner (In Progress)

• Workaround for BTrace’s loop restriction to allow safe processing of collections & arrays.
• Enables use cases like counting occurrences, summarizing values, and creating histograms.

✅ Pre-Loaded Agent Mode

• Ability to load BTrace as a Java Agent at startup to avoid security restrictions on dynamic attach.
• Helps in environments where -XX:+DisableAttachMechanism is enabled.

✅ JFR Event Auto-Generation

• A tool to auto-generate JFR events for traced methods.
• Would help bridge the gap between BTrace and Java Flight Recorder.

✅ OpenTelemetry Integration

• BTrace traces could be exported to OpenTelemetry for monitoring in Grafana, Prometheus, or Jaeger.
• Question: Would you prefer spans, metrics, or structured logs?

Medium-Priority Features

➖ Structured Output Formats

• JSON/Prometheus format to make BTrace logs easier to ingest into monitoring tools.

➖ Post-Processing & Visualization Tools

• CLI tools to help merge BTrace logs with JFR traces.
• Web-based dashboard for live visualization.

Low-Priority / Experimental Ideas

🟡 Cryptographically Signed Safe Method References

• Securely allow method references in BTrace scripts with two-phase approval or signing keys.

🟡 IDE Support / Script Validation

• Syntax validation & debugging tools for writing BTrace scripts.

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🤝 Want to Contribute?

If you're interested in helping with BTrace development, check out the issues labeled help wanted and good first issue. Some areas where we’d love help:

• OpenTelemetry integration
• Enhancements to JFR integration
• New script examples & documentation improvements

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📢 Give Your Feedback!

1️⃣ React to features above (👍 for what you want most)
2️⃣ Drop a comment below sharing how you use BTrace
3️⃣ Check out issues labeled help wanted if you want to contribute

Let’s make BTrace even better together! 🚀