Minecraft plugin spark

🔌 About spark

spark is a performance profiler for Minecraft servers, clients, and proxy software. It provides tools to inspect CPU activity, gather basic memory snapshots and heap dumps, and report server health metrics (TPS, tick durations, CPU/memory/disk usage). The project is open-source and designed to produce readable profiling output with minimal setup.

🎯 Purpose

spark's core purpose is to help server administrators and developers diagnose the causes of poor performance (lags, low tick rate, high CPU usage, excessive memory retention) by producing sampled CPU profiles, memory summaries, heap dumps, and continuous health metrics.

⚙️ Features

• CPU profiling (statistical sampling) with two engines: a Java ThreadMXBean-based engine and an optional native/async-profiler engine (native engine available on Linux & macOS).
• Memory inspection including heap summaries and the ability to produce full HPROF heap dumps for external analysis.
• Server health reporting: TPS measurements, tick duration statistics, CPU and memory usage, and disk usage monitoring.
• Readable profile output intended for viewing in the project's viewer component.
• Lightweight design intended to be usable on production servers with minimal configuration.

🧩 Who It Is For

• Server administrators and operators troubleshooting performance issues on Survival, SMP, minigame, or proxy-backed networks.
• Plugin and mod developers who need precise profiling data for code paths and memory usage.
• Operators running Fabric/Forge/Spigot/Paper/Proxy setups that require deeper diagnostics than simple TPS readings.

🏗️ Example Use Cases

• Capture a short CPU profile to identify which plugin, mod, or server task is consuming most CPU during lag spikes.
• Take a heap summary or heap dump to inspect excessive instance counts or memory leaks.
• Continuously monitor TPS and tick durations to correlate performance regressions with server events or external load.

⚙️ Installation

📥 Setup

• Download the appropriate plugin/mod jar for your platform.
• Place the jar into the server's plugins/ (or mods/plugins) folder for the target platform.
• Restart the server and confirm the plugin/mod loads by checking the server console/logs.

(These are the standard installation steps for Bukkit/Spigot/Paper-like plugins and other supported platforms.)

🧠 Technical Notes

• The project provides platform-specific components (Bukkit/Paper, Fabric, Forge, proxy builds, etc.).
• The native async-profiler engine is only available on Linux and macOS; the Java-based profiler runs on any JVM but uses a different sampling method.
• spark can produce HPROF heap dumps for external analysis with standard JVM tooling.
• The project is released under the GNU GPLv3 license.

🤝 When This Plugin Is Useful

If you need concrete, sample-based profiling and memory inspection to locate the root cause of lag or memory problems on a Minecraft server or proxy, spark provides the profiling, heap inspection, and health metrics needed to make informed debugging and tuning decisions.