Top 15 Alibaba Open‑Source Developer Tools Every Engineer Should Know

From manual to automation, the evolution of technology has been accompanied by the development of developer tools. Alibaba shares its technical accumulation from various business scenarios through open‑source projects, cloud services, and tools to help developers improve efficiency and write code more elegantly.

Since developers work across many technical fields, the author, from a backend developer’s viewpoint, selects tools that may be useful, introducing each with name, usage scenario, tutorial, and acquisition method.

1. Java Online Diagnostic Tool Arthas

Arthas is a Java online diagnostic tool open‑sourced by Alibaba in September 2018.

Typical usage scenarios include:

Identify which JAR a class is loaded from and resolve class‑related exceptions.

Verify whether code changes have taken effect.

Debug issues online without adding logs or redeploying.

Investigate data‑processing problems that occur only in production.

Obtain a global view of system runtime status.

Monitor JVM real‑time state.

Arthas supports JDK 6+, Linux/Mac/Windows, and offers a command‑line interactive mode with rich tab completion, facilitating problem location and diagnosis.

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: (Free) Open‑source address: https://github.com/alibaba/arthas

2. IDE Plugin Cloud Toolkit

Cloud Toolkit is an IDE plugin that helps developers develop, test, diagnose, and deploy applications more efficiently. It enables one‑click deployment of local applications to any machine (local or cloud) and includes built‑in Arthas diagnostics, terminal commands, and SQL execution.

Typical usage scenarios include:

Repeated packaging after each code change.

Frequent switching between Maven, Git, and other DevOps scripts.

Uploading files via SCP, XShell, SecureCRT, and handling deployment packages and restarts.

Tutorial: 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) Tool address: https://www.aliyun.com/product/cloudtoolkit

3. Chaos Engineering Tool ChaosBlade

ChaosBlade follows chaos engineering principles and provides a rich set of fault injection scenarios to improve the fault‑tolerance and recoverability of distributed systems.

Typical usage scenarios include:

Measuring fault‑tolerance of microservices.

Validating container orchestration configurations.

Testing PaaS layer robustness.

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

Acquisition: (Free) Open‑source address: https://github.com/chaosblade-io/chaosblade/wiki/新手指南

4. Java Code Convention Scanning Plugin

This plugin detects non‑standard code patterns in Java projects and provides suggestions. It is implemented in Kotlin.

Tutorial: 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: (Free) Open‑source address: https://github.com/alibaba/p3c

5. Application Real‑Time Monitoring Tool ARMS

ARMS is an APM‑type monitoring tool offering front‑end, application, and custom monitoring options, enabling rapid construction of real‑time performance and business monitoring capabilities.

Typical usage scenarios include:

Receiving numerous alerts at night with no clear remediation path.

Business issues reported by customers before developers can investigate.

High server costs without guaranteed user experience.

Tutorial: Front‑end monitoring: https://help.aliyun.com/document_detail/106086.html Application monitoring: https://help.aliyun.com/document_detail/63796.html Custom monitoring: https://help.aliyun.com/document_detail/47474.html

Acquisition: (Paid) Tool address: 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 into a static site, supporting React, static rendering, PC and mobile, internationalization, SEO, markdown, global search, and customizable themes.

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

Acquisition: (Free) Project address: https://github.com/txd-team/docsite

7. Android Instant Compilation Tool Freeline

Freeline leverages cache files to compile code changes and deploy to devices within seconds, dramatically reducing recompilation and installation time during daily development. It is most conveniently used via an Android Studio plugin.

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

Acquisition: (Free) Project address: https://github.com/alibaba/freeline

8. Performance Testing Tool PTS

PTS simulates large numbers of users accessing business services, allowing tasks to be launched at any time without setup or maintenance costs. It supports converting JMeter scripts to PTS load tests and native JMeter engine testing.

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

Acquisition: (Paid) Tool address: https://www.aliyun.com/product/pts

9. Cloud‑Native Development Tool KT

KT simplifies joint debugging and testing under Kubernetes, improving development efficiency on Kubernetes‑based platforms.

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

Acquisition: (Free) Tool address: https://yq.aliyun.com/download/3393

10. Architecture Visualization Tool AHAS

AHAS provides architecture visualization for container environments such as Kubernetes, along with fault‑injection high‑availability assessment and one‑click flow‑control and degradation features, enabling low‑cost improvements in application availability.

Typical usage scenarios include:

Visualizing resource composition and interactions during service‑oriented refactoring.

Introducing realistic fault scenarios and rehearsal models.

Obtaining flow‑control and degradation capabilities with low entry barriers.

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

Acquisition: (Free) Tool address: https://www.aliyun.com/product/ahas

11. Data Processing Tool EasyExcel

EasyExcel is a Java framework for parsing and generating Excel files. It rewrites POI’s handling of Excel 2007+ files, reducing memory consumption from ~100 MB to kilobytes and preventing out‑of‑memory errors even with large spreadsheets.

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

Acquisition: (Open‑source) https://github.com/alibaba/easyexcel

12. iOS JSON Library HandyJSON

HandyJSON is a Swift library for JSON serialization/deserialization. Unlike other Swift JSON libraries, it works with pure Swift classes, requires no NSObject inheritance or explicit mapping functions, and automatically maps JSON keys to model property names.

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

Acquisition: (Open‑source) https://github.com/alibaba/HandyJSON

13. Serverless Deployment Tool EDAS Serverless

EDAS Serverless is a Kubernetes‑based serverless platform for applications and microservices. Users can create native Kubernetes container applications from images, WAR, or JAR packages without managing clusters, supporting Spring Cloud, Dubbo, and other mainstream frameworks.

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

Acquisition: (Free during public testing) 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 features.

Tutorial: https://github.com/alibaba/druid/wiki/%E5%B8%B8%E8%A7%81%E9%97%AE%E9%A2%98

Acquisition: (Open‑source) http://central.maven.org/maven2/com/alibaba/druid/

15. Java Toolset Dragonwell

Alibaba Dragonwell is the open‑source version of Alibaba’s internally customized OpenJDK (AJDK), optimized for e‑commerce, finance, and logistics workloads, compatible with Java SE and currently supporting Linux/x86_64.

Tutorial: https://github.com/alibaba/dragonwell8/wiki/%E9%98%BF%E9%87%8C%E5%B7%B4%E5%B7%B4Dragonwell8%E7%94%A8%E6%88%B7%E6%8C%87%E5%8D%97

Acquisition: (Open‑source) https://github.com/alibaba/dragonwell8