Top 15 Alibaba Developer Tools Every Backend Engineer Should Know

1. Arthas – Java Online Diagnostic Tool

Arthas, open‑sourced by Alibaba in September 2018, enables real‑time diagnosis of Java applications on JDK 6+ across Linux, macOS, and Windows via an interactive command‑line interface with tab completion.

Typical usage scenarios:

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

Verify whether recent code changes have taken effect.

Debug production issues without redeploying or adding logs.

Investigate data‑processing problems that cannot be reproduced offline.

Obtain a global view of system health.

Monitor JVM runtime status in real time.

Tutorial:

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

Acquisition:

Open‑source at

https://github.com/alibaba/arthas

2. Cloud Toolkit – IDE Plugin

Cloud Toolkit integrates development, testing, diagnosis, and deployment into IDEs (IntelliJ IDEA, Eclipse, PyCharm, Maven). It supports one‑click deployment to local or cloud machines and bundles Arthas, terminal commands, and SQL execution.

Typical usage scenarios:

Eliminate repetitive packaging after each code change.

Switch between Maven, Git, and various ops scripts.

Upload files via SCP, manage servers with XShell/SecureCRT, replace packages, and restart services.

Transfer files to specific server directories without juggling multiple FTP/SCP tools.

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 at

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

3. ChaosBlade – Chaos Engineering Injection Tool

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

Typical usage scenarios:

Assess microservice fault tolerance.

Validate container orchestration configurations.

Test PaaS layer robustness.

Tutorial:

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

Acquisition:

Open‑source at the same URL.

4. Java Code Convention Scanner (p3c) – IDE Plugin

This plugin, written in Kotlin, scans Java code for style violations and provides suggestions.

Tutorials:

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

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

Acquisition:

Open‑source at

https://github.com/alibaba/p3c

5. ARMS – Application Real‑Time Monitoring (APM)

ARMS provides front‑end, application, and custom monitoring, enabling rapid construction of real‑time performance and business dashboards.

Typical usage scenarios:

Handling a flood of alerts at odd hours.

Responding to customer complaints while diagnosing issues.

Ensuring user experience despite high server costs.

Tutorials:

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 Acquisition:

Paid service at

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

6. Docsite – Static Site Generator

Docsite delivers a unified solution for websites, documentation, blogs, and communities, supporting React, static rendering, PC/mobile, i18n, SEO, Markdown, global search, and theme/custom page customization.

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

Open‑source at

https://github.com/txd-team/docsite

7. Freeline – Android Seconds‑Level Compilation

Freeline caches files to compile and deploy code changes to devices within seconds, dramatically reducing rebuild time. It is distributed as an Android Studio plugin.

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

Open‑source at

https://github.com/alibaba/freeline

8. PTS – Performance Testing Service

PTS simulates massive user traffic, supports on‑demand task creation, and converts JMeter scripts for load testing, also compatible with native JMeter.

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

Paid service at

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

9. KT – Cloud‑Efficient Developer Tool for Kubernetes

KT simplifies joint testing under Kubernetes, boosting development efficiency on K8s platforms.

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

Free download at

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

10. AHAS – Architecture Visualization for K8s

AHAS visualizes container architectures, offers fault‑injection high‑availability assessments, and provides one‑click flow‑control and downgrade features.

Typical usage scenarios:

Visualizing resource composition and interactions during service‑mesh migration.

Injecting realistic fault scenarios for drills.

Obtaining low‑threshold flow‑control and downgrade capabilities.

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

Free at

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

11. EasyExcel – Efficient Excel Processing for Java

EasyExcel rewrites POI’s 07‑Excel parsing, reducing memory usage from ~100 MB to kilobytes, and prevents OOM even with large files. It also supports POI’s 03‑Excel SAX mode.

Tutorial:

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

Acquisition:

Open‑source at

https://github.com/alibaba/easyexcel

12. HandyJSON – Swift JSON Serialization Library

HandyJSON offers pure‑Swift JSON ↔︎ model conversion without requiring NSObject inheritance or KVC, simplifying model definition.

Tutorial:

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

Acquisition:

Open‑source at

https://github.com/alibaba/HandyJSON

13. EDAS Serverless – Kubernetes‑Based Serverless Platform

EDAS Serverless lets users deploy applications and microservices on Kubernetes without managing clusters, supporting images, WAR/JAR packages, Spring Cloud, and Dubbo.

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

Free during public beta at

https://help.aliyun.com/document_detail/97792.html

14. Druid – Java Database Connection Pool

Druid provides a powerful, monitorable, and extensible connection pool for Java applications.

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

Open‑source at

http://central.maven.org/maven2/com/alibaba/druid/

15. Dragonwell – Alibaba‑Customized OpenJDK

Dragonwell is Alibaba’s open‑source OpenJDK distribution, optimized for e‑commerce, finance, and logistics workloads, running on over 100 000 servers and compatible with Java SE on Linux/x86_64.

Tutorial:

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

Acquisition:

Open‑source at

https://github.com/alibaba/dragonwell8