Top 15 Alibaba Developer Tools Every Backend Engineer Should Know

1. Java Online Diagnostic Tool Arthas

Arthas is an open‑source Java online diagnostic tool released by Alibaba in September 2018. It addresses common problems such as unknown class origins, code that does not execute, lack of online debugging, and difficulty reproducing production issues.

Supported environments: JDK 6+, Linux/Mac/Windows; command‑line interface with tab completion.

Tutorials: basic guide – https://alibaba.github.io/arthas/arthas-tutorials?language=cn&id=arthas-basics; advanced guide – https://alibaba.github.io/arthas/arthas-tutorials?language=cn&id=arthas-advanced.

Acquisition: open‑source, source code at https://github.com/alibaba/arthas.

2. IDE Plugin Cloud Toolkit

Cloud Toolkit is an IDE plugin that streamlines development, testing, diagnosis, and deployment. It supports IntelliJ IDEA, Eclipse, PyCharm, and Maven, and bundles Arthas, terminal commands, and SQL execution.

Typical scenarios include repetitive packaging after code changes, frequent switching between Maven, Git, and operation scripts, and manual file uploads via SCP or FTP.

Tutorials: IntelliJ IDEA – https://help.aliyun.com/document_detail/98762.html; Eclipse – https://help.aliyun.com/document_detail/29970.html; PyCharm – https://help.aliyun.com/document_detail/112740.html; Maven – https://help.aliyun.com/document_detail/108682.html.

Acquisition: free, product page at https://www.aliyun.com/product/cloudtoolkit.

3. Chaos Engineering Tool ChaosBlade

ChaosBlade follows chaos‑engineering principles to inject a variety of fault scenarios (latency, exceptions, return values, parameter changes, retries, try‑catch blocks) into distributed systems, improving fault tolerance and recoverability.

Use cases: measuring microservice fault tolerance, validating container orchestration configurations, testing PaaS robustness.

Tutorial: https://github.com/chaosblade-io/chaosblade/wiki/新手指南.

Acquisition: open‑source, repository at https://github.com/chaosblade-io/chaosblade.

4. Java Code‑Style Scanning Plugin (p3c)

This plugin detects non‑standard Java code patterns and provides suggestions. It is implemented in Kotlin and offers IDE integrations for IntelliJ IDEA and Eclipse.

Tutorials: IDEA – https://github.com/alibaba/p3c/wiki/IDEA插件; Eclipse – https://github.com/alibaba/p3c/wiki/Eclipse.

Acquisition: open‑source, source code at https://github.com/alibaba/p3c.

5. Application Performance Monitoring Tool ARMS

ARMS is an APM solution offering front‑end, application, and custom monitoring. It enables rapid construction of real‑time performance and business monitoring dashboards.

Typical alerts: high‑volume alarm bursts at night, customer complaints before issue detection, and costly server usage without user‑experience guarantees.

Integration guides: front‑end – https://help.aliyun.com/documentdetail/106086.html; application – https://help.aliyun.com/documentdetail/63796.html; custom – https://help.aliyun.com/document_detail/47474.html.

Acquisition: commercial, product page at https://www.aliyun.com/product/arms.

6. Static Site Generator Docsite

Docsite is an open‑source solution that combines website, documentation, blog, and community features. It supports React, static rendering, PC and mobile, internationalization, SEO, markdown, global search, and theme/custom page customization.

Tutorial: https://docsite.js.org/zh-cn/docs/installation.html.

Acquisition: open‑source, repository at https://github.com/txd-team/docsite.

7. Android Instant‑Compile Tool Freeline

Freeline caches files to enable second‑level compilation and deployment within seconds, drastically reducing rebuild and reinstall time for Android development. It is distributed as an Android Studio plugin.

Tutorial: https://github.com/alibaba/freeline/blob/master/README-zh.md.

Acquisition: open‑source, repository at https://github.com/alibaba/freeline.

8. Performance Testing Service PTS

PTS simulates massive user traffic for load testing. It can convert JMeter scripts to PTS tests or run native JMeter scripts directly.

Tutorial: https://help.aliyun.com/document_detail/70290.html.

Acquisition: commercial, product page at https://www.aliyun.com/product/pts.

9. Cloud Development Tool KT

KT simplifies integration testing under Kubernetes, improving developer efficiency for Kubernetes‑based projects.

Tutorial: https://yq.aliyun.com/articles/690519.

Acquisition: free, download at https://yq.aliyun.com/download/3393.

10. Architecture Visualization Tool AHAS

AHAS provides architecture visualization for container environments (e.g., Kubernetes) and offers fault‑injection high‑availability assessment, one‑click flow‑control, and degradation features.

Tutorial: https://help.aliyun.com/document_detail/90323.html.

Acquisition: free, product page at https://www.aliyun.com/product/ahas.

11. Excel Processing Library EasyExcel

EasyExcel is a Java framework for parsing and generating Excel files. It reduces memory consumption dramatically compared to POI, handling large files without OOM errors.

Tutorial: https://github.com/alibaba/easyexcel/blob/master/quickstart.md.

Acquisition: open‑source, repository at https://github.com/alibaba/easyexcel.

12. iOS JSON Library HandyJSON

HandyJSON is a Swift library for JSON serialization/deserialization that works with pure Swift classes without requiring NSObject inheritance or explicit mapping functions.

Tutorial: https://github.com/alibaba/HandyJSON/blob/master/README_cn.md.

Acquisition: open‑source, repository at https://github.com/alibaba/HandyJSON.

13. Serverless Deployment Platform EDAS Serverless

EDAS Serverless is a Kubernetes‑based serverless platform for applications and microservices. It allows users to deploy containers via images, WAR, or JAR packages without managing clusters, supporting Spring Cloud and Dubbo.

Tutorial: https://help.aliyun.com/document_detail/102048.html.

Acquisition: free during public beta, product page at https://help.aliyun.com/document_detail/97792.html.

14. Database Connection Pool Druid

Druid is a Java database connection pool offering extensive monitoring and extensibility.

Tutorial: https://github.com/alibaba/druid/wiki/常见问题.

Acquisition: open‑source, Maven repository at http://central.maven.org/maven2/com/alibaba/druid/.

15. Java Runtime Toolset Dragonwell

Alibaba Dragonwell is an open‑source distribution of OpenJDK (AJDK) optimized for large‑scale e‑commerce, finance, and logistics workloads, compatible with Java SE and supporting Linux/x86_64.

Tutorial: https://github.com/alibaba/dragonwell8/wiki/阿里巴巴Dragonwell8用户指南.

Acquisition: open‑source, repository at https://github.com/alibaba/dragonwell8.