Support ProfileLifecycle.TRACE #4576

lbloder · 2025-07-29T19:18:43Z

📜 Description

Support ProfileLifecycle.TRACE with Sentry Tracing as well as OpenTelemetry
Improve timestamp calculation
Use improved command to start async profiler
Enum for Platform in ProfileChunk
Fix most comments from Feat/poc continuous profiling #4556

💡 Motivation and Context

Follow-Up to #4556

💚 How did you test it?

📝 Checklist

I added tests to verify the changes.
No new PII added or SDK only sends newly added PII if sendDefaultPII is enabled.
I updated the docs if needed.
I updated the wizard if needed.
Review from the native team if needed.
No breaking change or entry added to the changelog.
No breaking change for hybrid SDKs or communicated to hybrid SDKs.

🔮 Next steps

Fix Ratelimiting (see this comment: Feat/poc continuous profiling #4556 (comment))
Deduplicate StackFrames to reduce payload size
Comprehensive automated tests for Converter

…TRACE is used to have the profile ID when SentryTracer is created

…ingBoot autoconfig

…and make fields private

…the interval separately, this seems to work better and create more samples

… spans

…onfigs

…is not configured

github-actions · 2025-07-29T19:19:09Z

	Fails
🚫	Please consider adding a changelog entry for the next release.

	Messages
📖	Do not forget to update Sentry-docs with your feature once the pull request gets approved.

Instructions and example for changelog

Please add an entry to CHANGELOG.md to the "Unreleased" section. Make sure the entry includes this PR's number.

Example:

## Unreleased

- Support ProfileLifecycle.TRACE ([#4576](https://github.com/getsentry/sentry-java/pull/4576))

If none of the above apply, you can opt out of this check by adding #skip-changelog to the PR description.

Generated by 🚫 dangerJS against 8b7e489

github-actions · 2025-07-29T19:31:55Z

Performance metrics 🚀

	Plain	With Sentry	Diff
Startup time	439.92 ms	478.18 ms	38.26 ms
Size	1.58 MiB	2.09 MiB	521.13 KiB

Baseline results on branch: feat/poc-continuous-profiling

Startup times

Revision	Plain	With Sentry	Diff
`d53675e`	447.81 ms	457.62 ms	9.80 ms

App size

Revision	Plain	With Sentry	Diff
`d53675e`	1.58 MiB	2.09 MiB	520.14 KiB

Previous results on branch: feat/continuous-profiling-02

Startup times

Revision	Plain	With Sentry	Diff
`ac08652`	442.71 ms	446.19 ms	3.48 ms
`c21fbdb`	420.29 ms	449.88 ms	29.59 ms

App size

Revision	Plain	With Sentry	Diff
`ac08652`	1.58 MiB	2.09 MiB	521.13 KiB
`c21fbdb`	1.58 MiB	2.09 MiB	521.13 KiB

…entry-java into feat/continuous-profiling-02

adinauer · 2025-08-04T08:57:04Z

@sentry review

adinauer · 2025-08-04T08:57:19Z

cursor review

cursor · 2025-08-04T09:00:50Z

sentry/src/main/java/io/sentry/ExternalOptions.java

+    String profileLifecycleString = propertiesProvider.getProperty("profile-lifecycle");
+    if (profileLifecycleString != null && !profileLifecycleString.isEmpty()) {
+      options.setProfileLifecycle(ProfileLifecycle.valueOf(profileLifecycleString.toUpperCase()));
+    }


Bug: Profile Lifecycle Parsing Error Handling

Missing error handling when parsing the profile-lifecycle property. If an invalid string value is provided, ProfileLifecycle.valueOf(profileLifecycleString.toUpperCase()) throws an IllegalArgumentException, causing the application to crash during initialization. Error handling should be added to prevent crashes, log a warning, and optionally fall back to a default value.

@adinauer WDYT, what should we do here. catch and ignore the exception if an unsupported value is present? That is basically what we do in getDoubleProperty in the ExternalOptions as well if its not a number we just set it to null

seer-by-sentry · 2025-08-04T09:02:03Z

sentry/src/main/java/io/sentry/Sentry.java

+        if (profilingTracesDirPath == null) {
+          profilingTracesDirPath =
+              Files.createTempDirectory("profiling_traces").toAbsolutePath().toString();
+          options.setProfilingTracesDirPath(profilingTracesDirPath);
+        }


Potential bug: Repeated `Sentry.init()` calls create new temporary profiling directories without cleaning up old ones, leading to a disk space leak over time.

Description: When continuous profiling is enabled and profilingTracesDirPath is not configured, Sentry.init() calls Files.createTempDirectory() to create a directory for traces. However, if Sentry.init() is called multiple times during the application's lifecycle, a new temporary directory is created each time without removing the previous one. This leads to an accumulation of directories on the disk, which can exhaust disk space in long-running applications, potentially causing the application or server to fail. A TODO comment in JavaContinuousProfiler.java acknowledges this lack of cleanup on restart.

Suggested fix: Implement a cleanup mechanism. Before creating a new temporary directory in initJvmContinuousProfiling, check if a temporary path was already set by a previous init() call and reuse or clean it up. Alternatively, register a shutdown hook to delete the created temporary directory when the application exits. The directory path could be stored in a static field to be managed across init() calls.
_{severity: 0.6, confidence: 0.95}

_{Did we get this right? 👍 / 👎 to inform future reviews.}

Empty dirs shouldn't be an issue.

I would think so too. If this becomes a problem we can come up with a better way to handle this

adinauer · 2025-08-05T06:24:38Z

...y-async-profiler/src/main/java/io/sentry/asyncprofiler/profiling/JavaContinuousProfiler.java

@@ -283,14 +272,21 @@ private void stop(final boolean restartProfiler) {
        // start profiling), meaning there's no scopes to send the chunks. In that case, we store
        // the data in a list and send it when the next chunk is finished.
        try (final @NotNull ISentryLifecycleToken ignored2 = payloadLock.acquire()) {
+          File jfrFile = new File(filename);
+          // TODO: should we add deleteOnExit() here to let the JVM clean up the file?


Yes, deleting sounds like the way to go here since we likely can't find it on restart anyways.

adinauer · 2025-08-05T06:31:26Z

...sentry-opentelemetry-core/src/main/java/io/sentry/opentelemetry/OtelSentrySpanProcessor.java

@@ -159,6 +171,13 @@ public boolean isStartRequired() {
  public void onEnd(final @NotNull ReadableSpan spanBeingEnded) {
    final @Nullable IOtelSpanWrapper sentrySpan =
        spanStorage.getSentrySpan(spanBeingEnded.getSpanContext());
+
+    if (isRootSpan(spanBeingEnded.toSpanData())


l So, if a span is never ended we keep the profiler running indefinitely, correct? We might need to fix this at some point in the future. For now I'd say we can keep it as is.

adinauer · 2025-08-05T07:31:16Z

...sentry-opentelemetry-core/src/main/java/io/sentry/opentelemetry/OtelSentrySpanProcessor.java

@@ -82,6 +83,17 @@ public void onStart(final @NotNull Context parentContext, final @NotNull ReadWri

      final @Nullable Boolean sampled = isSampled(otelSpan, samplingDecision);

+      if (Boolean.TRUE.equals(sampled) && isRootSpan(otelSpan.toSpanData())) {


l Is there much benefit to only starting/stopping the profiler for root spans?
My thoughts here:

might help avoid keeping the profiler running if a span isn't finished (see comment further down)

might cause issues when we move to span streaming (not sure if there's ever a case where we already have a finished root span but one/multiple children are still running)

We can keep the implementation as is for now, I just wanted to dump my thoughts here.

I've taken that logic from how it works with Transactions in Sentry. Whenever we start/finish a new Transaction the profiler is started/stopped. So in OTEL it should now work the same as in Sentry without OTEL.

If we ever have Spans that are running without a Transaction or Root span we need to rethink the logic in both Sentry Tracing and OTEL Tracing.

I'm with you to keep it that way for now.

adinauer · 2025-08-05T07:40:43Z

sentry/src/main/java/io/sentry/ProfileChunk.java

@@ -202,6 +203,33 @@ public ProfileChunk build(SentryOptions options) {
    }
  }

+  public enum Platform implements JsonSerializable {


h Will this cause problems with other SDKs going through Java SDKs de/serialization? Is a String more flexible here?

Hmm, good point.... so, WDYT, is it safer to revert the changes around the enum and just use string constants for "android" and "java" instead?

adinauer · 2025-08-05T07:43:20Z

sentry/src/main/java/io/sentry/Sentry.java

+        if (profilingTracesDirPath == null) {
+          profilingTracesDirPath =
+              Files.createTempDirectory("profiling_traces").toAbsolutePath().toString();
+          options.setProfilingTracesDirPath(profilingTracesDirPath);
+        }


Empty dirs shouldn't be an issue.

lbloder added 19 commits July 22, 2025 10:21

delete unused JfrFrame and JfrToSentryProfileconverter

f223988

use passed-in profilingTracesHz parameter instead of hardcoded value

8599796

start profiler before starting the transaction when ProfileLifecycle.…

cf30ed7

…TRACE is used to have the profile ID when SentryTracer is created

use improved way to calculate timestamp of sample

db85236

api dump

29aa41e

let profile-lifecycle be set from external_options, add tests for Spr…

e64ba32

…ingBoot autoconfig

initialize stackTraceFactory only once per chunk

50bd861

rename profile data classes, add deserialization and tests

c5fc1f8

extract methods in ProfileConverter, fix SentryProfile serialization …

119189a

…and make fields private

use wall=[interval] instead of setting the event to wall and setting …

126cc6b

…the interval separately, this seems to work better and create more samples

start/stop profiler in OtelSentrySpanProcesser in trace mode for root…

a65ba60

… spans

add profiler dependency to jakarta-opentelemetry sample, add needed c…

77c4942

…onfigs

add dependenies and config to spring-boot-jakarta sample

923a78a

remove connection status check

38cdd28

extract event visitor

f5d7b39

Add enum for ProfileChunk platform

f6d6233

fallback to default temp directory for profiling on jvm if directory …

6a8fedd

…is not configured

cleanup some minor things

f669b4f

remove ProfilingInitializer, fix comments

7bd2054

Format code

e520d11

lbloder added 4 commits July 29, 2025 21:37

add getter/setter to sample and metadata

7079391

Merge branch 'feat/continuous-profiling-02' of github.com:getsentry/s…

34398f6

…entry-java into feat/continuous-profiling-02

fix compile error

536ffb7

add comment/todo for deleteOnExit

8b7e489

lbloder mentioned this pull request Aug 4, 2025

Feat/poc continuous profiling #4556

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9 tasks

lbloder marked this pull request as ready for review August 4, 2025 08:57

lbloder requested a review from adinauer as a code owner August 4, 2025 08:57

lbloder requested review from romtsn, stefanosiano, markushi and lcian as code owners August 4, 2025 08:57

cursor bot reviewed Aug 4, 2025

View reviewed changes

seer-by-sentry bot reviewed Aug 4, 2025

View reviewed changes

adinauer reviewed Aug 5, 2025

View reviewed changes

		@@ -82,6 +83,17 @@ public void onStart(final @NotNull Context parentContext, final @NotNull ReadWri

		final @Nullable Boolean sampled = isSampled(otelSpan, samplingDecision);

		if (Boolean.TRUE.equals(sampled) && isRootSpan(otelSpan.toSpanData())) {

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Support ProfileLifecycle.TRACE #4576

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lbloder commented Jul 29, 2025 • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

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📜 Description

💡 Motivation and Context

💚 How did you test it?

📝 Checklist

🔮 Next steps

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Instructions and example for changelog

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Performance metrics 🚀

Baseline results on branch: feat/poc-continuous-profiling

Startup times

App size

Previous results on branch: feat/continuous-profiling-02

Startup times

App size

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adinauer commented Aug 4, 2025

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Bug: Profile Lifecycle Parsing Error Handling

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lbloder commented Jul 29, 2025 •

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