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JDK command line tools

Last update: 12 Nov 2022

HotSpot and J9 common commands

  • jar Creates the .jar files
  • jarsigner Signs the .jar files
  • java Starts thte JVM and execute the Java code in the application
  • javac Java compiler
  • javadoc Extracts the documentation info from the Java source files and produce the JavaDoc
  • javap Show the bytecode of a .class file
  • jconsole profiler, Java Monitoring and Management Console
  • jdb Debugger
  • jdeprscan DEPRecated Scanner, looks for deprecated code in .class and .jar files
  • jdeps Show the dependencies
  • jimage Handle the JIMAGE package
  • jjs Nashhorn JavaScript engine
  • jlink 9+ Linker to create custom JRE
  • jmod Handles the JMOD package
  • jrunscript Generic command line script shell. By default, it uses JavaScript
  • jshell 9+ Java Shell
  • keytool Handles the keystore
  • pack200 Compress files
  • rmic RMI Compiler
  • rmid RMI Activation daemon
  • rmiregistry RMI registry
  • serialver Shows the serial version UID
  • unpack200 Decompress a pack2000 file

HotSpot only commands

  • jaotc Ahead-of-time Compiler
  • jcmd JVM runtime diagnostic
  • jhsdb Core dump analyzer
  • jinfo Shows JVM runtime info
  • jmap Shows the runtime memory map (replaced by jcmd)
  • jps Lists all the applications running in a JVM
  • jstack Shows the Java threads stack trace
  • jstat Shows JVM statistics
  • jstatd Daemon version of jstat

J9 only commands

  • jdmpview Analyse a core dump file
  • jextract Extract info from a core dump file
  • traceformat Process the trace data

Commands, libraries and projects once in the JDK and are now independent

  • Visual VM jvisualvm
  • Mission Control jmc
  • JavaFX javafxpackager, javapackager
  • CORBA idlj, orbd, servertool, tnameserv
  • JAXB schemagen, xjc
  • JAXWS/WSDL wsgen, wsimport

Commands removed after Java 8

  • appletviewer Removed in 11
  • extcheck Removed in 9
  • javah Native-Header Generation Tool, Removed in 10
  • javaws WebStart, Removed in 11
  • jhat Heap visualizer, Removed in 9
  • jsadebugd Removed in 9
  • native2ascii Removed in 9. https://bugs.java.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=JDK-8074431
  • policytool Removed in 10