JStack by Command String
For years, a recurring pain point in JVM debugging has been identifying the correct process ID when you launch a JVM through a shell script wrapper and later need to attach jstack to it. The standard jps utility often returns disappointingly opaque output, particularly with tools like Leiningen that add layers of indirection.
To address this, a small Ruby script was created that traverses the process tree of everything matching a specified pattern, locates any JVMs those processes spawned, and targets the highest-numbered one—presumably the most recently launched—with jstack. The approach is admittedly imperfect, as PID rollover can lead to misidentification, yet in practice it has proven remarkably effective for debugging sessions.
Here’s the script:
