Top 15 Alibaba Developer Tools Every Backend Engineer Should Know

From manual debugging to automated observability, the evolution of technology is accompanied by a growing ecosystem of developer tools.

1. Java Online Diagnostic Tool Arthas

Arthas is an open‑source Java online diagnostic tool released by Alibaba in September 2018.

Typical usage scenarios:

Identify which JAR a class was loaded from and troubleshoot class‑related exceptions.

Detect why modified code is not executed.

Debug issues in production without redeploying.

Observe real‑time JVM metrics.

Supported on JDK 6+, Linux/Mac/Windows with an interactive command‑line interface and tab completion.

Basic tutorial: https://alibaba.github.io/arthas/arthas-tutorials?language=cn&id=arthas-basics

Advanced tutorial: https://alibaba.github.io/arthas/arthas-tutorials?language=cn&id=arthas-advanced

Download (open‑source): 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, offering one‑click deployment to local or cloud machines and built‑in Arthas, terminal commands, and SQL execution.

Typical usage scenarios:

Avoid repetitive packaging after each code change.

Reduce context switching among Maven, Git, and various DevOps scripts.

Replace manual SCP uploads and XShell logins.

Documentation:

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

Free download: https://www.aliyun.com/product/cloudtoolkit

3. Chaos Engineering Tool ChaosBlade

ChaosBlade follows chaos engineering principles, providing rich fault injection scenarios (latency, exceptions, return values, parameter changes, repeated calls, try‑catch blocks) to improve distributed system resilience.

Typical usage scenarios:

Assess microservice fault‑tolerance.

Validate container orchestration configurations.

Test PaaS layer robustness.

Getting started guide: https://github.com/chaosblade-io/chaosblade/wiki/新手指南

Download (open‑source): https://github.com/chaosblade-io/chaosblade/wiki/新手指南

4. Java Code Convention Scanning Plugin

This plugin, written in Kotlin, detects non‑standard code patterns in Java projects and provides suggestions.

IDE documentation:

IntelliJ IDEA: https://github.com/alibaba/p3c/wiki/IDEA插件使用文档

Eclipse: https://github.com/alibaba/p3c/wiki/Eclipse插件使用文档

Download (open‑source): https://github.com/alibaba/p3c

5. Application Real‑Time Monitoring Tool ARMS

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

Typical usage scenarios:

Handle alarm spikes at odd hours.

Respond quickly to customer complaints.

Maintain user experience despite high infrastructure costs.

Integration guides:

Front‑end monitoring: https://help.aliyun.com/documentdetail/106086.html

Application monitoring: https://help.aliyun.com/documentdetail/63796.html

Custom monitoring: https://help.aliyun.com/document_detail/47474.html

Commercial version: https://www.aliyun.com/product/arms

6. Static Site Generator Docsite

Docsite is an open‑source static site solution that combines website, documentation, blog, and community features, supporting React, SSR, PC and mobile, i18n, SEO, Markdown, global search, and theme customization.

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

Download (open‑source): https://github.com/txd-team/docsite

7. Android Instant Compilation Tool Freeline

Freeline caches build artifacts to achieve second‑level compilation and deployment for Android, dramatically reducing rebuild time. It is available as an Android Studio plugin.

Repository: https://github.com/alibaba/freeline

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

8. Performance Testing Tool PTS

PTS simulates massive user traffic, supports on‑demand task creation, and can convert JMeter scripts for load testing, while also supporting native JMeter execution.

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

Commercial version: https://www.aliyun.com/product/pts

9. Cloud Development Tool KT

KT simplifies integration testing under Kubernetes, improving developer efficiency on K8s platforms.

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

Free download: https://yq.aliyun.com/download/3393

10. Architecture Visualization Tool AHAS

AHAS provides architecture visualization for container environments (e.g., K8s) and offers fault‑injection high‑availability testing and one‑click flow control.

Use cases include visualizing service interactions, injecting failures, and low‑threshold flow control.

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

Free download: https://www.aliyun.com/product/ahas

11. Excel Processing Library EasyExcel

EasyExcel parses and generates Excel files in Java with low memory consumption (KB‑level) and avoids OOM issues, wrapping POI’s SAX mode for both .xls and .xlsx.

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

Download (open‑source): 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.

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

Download (open‑source): https://github.com/alibaba/HandyJSON

13. Cloud‑Native Serverless Platform EDAS Serverless

EDAS Serverless is a Kubernetes‑based serverless platform for applications and microservices, allowing deployment via images, WAR, or JAR without managing clusters, and supporting Spring Cloud and Dubbo.

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

Free during public beta: https://help.aliyun.com/document_detail/97792.html

14. Database Connection Pool Druid

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

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

Download (open‑source): http://central.maven.org/maven2/com/alibaba/druid/

15. Java Runtime Tool Dragonwell

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

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

Download (open‑source): https://github.com/alibaba/dragonwell8