I want no monuments

Following my previous post, in the agent smith post series.

Smith comes in two versions: one is java5 only, the other is java6+, meaning you must have at least java 6 (or mustang) to run it.

The two versions differ in one feature only: the ability to load the agent after the jvm start up, instead of the usual way that’s by specifying it with a command line parameter. Anyway, such feature is experimental (even if I use it daily).

Let’s see what to do to begin using Smith.

1. Download the latest version of Smith at the project page and unpack the zip file
2. Run the command:
   

   ant dist

3. Check the dist folder for smith-${version}.jar
4. Download the test classes and unpack the zip file
5. Compile them with
   

   javac Main.java

6. Run them with
   

   java -javaagent:<PATH_TO_SMITH_JAR>=<PATH_TO_CURRENT_FOLDER> Main

   Every path must be absolute.
   You should see two messages repeating every one second

   Bar: I’m doing something
   Bar$Foo: What else???

7. Now open another console and go to the test classes source folder
8. Edit file Bar.java and change the two text printed by System.out.println
9. Compile Bar.java with javac
10. Check the first console: do you see the messages changed?

Easier done than said :)

Next time we’ll set up Tomcat to use Smith into a webapp.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 12th, 2007 at 5:20 pm and is filed under Smith, Knowledge, Java. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.