The Java Pyroscope agent does not use `pyroscope.application.name ` when profiling Gradle assemblies

[patsevanton]

Problem description

When trying to profile a Gradle project build using the Java Pyroscope agent, the application name that is set in the gradle.properties file via the system property -Dpyroscope.application.name , is not recognized and is not applied. Instead of the custom name specified in the configuration, the automatically generated default name is displayed in the Pyroscope user interface.

Expected behavior:

It is expected that after the Gradle build is completed with the java agent configured, an application with the name my-application and the corresponding tags {env=prod,version=1.0}, as it was specified in `gradle.properties'.

Current (actual) behavior:

In the Pyroscope user interface, instead of the expected name my-application, an automatically generated name is displayed, in this case javaspy.WeChRaEsRvWcEjq93mpGGg. This indicates that the agent is running and sending data, but it cannot correctly determine or apply the application name from the JVM arguments passed to the Gradle daemon.

As you can see in the attached screenshot, there is no my-application in the list of applications.

Steps to reproduce

To reproduce the problem, follow these steps::

1. Installing and configuring the Gradle environment:

• Downloading the Gradle distribution:

wget https://services.gradle.org/distributions/gradle-8.14.2-bin.zip

• Creating a directory and unpacking an archive:

mkdir /opt/gradle
unzip -d /opt/gradle gradle-8.14.2-bin.zip

• Setting up the environment variable PATH:

export PATH=$PATH:/opt/gradle/gradle-8.14.2/bin

2. Creating a Gradle test project:

mkdir gradle-profiling-example
cd gradle-profiling-example
gradle init --type java-application --dsl kotlin --test-framework junit-jupiter --project-name simple-app --package com.example

3. Loading the Java Pyroscope agent:

• The agent is loaded into the Gradle daemon cache directory to be accessible to the daemon JVM.

wget -O /home/user/.gradle/daemon/8.14.2/pyroscope.jar https://github.com/grafana/pyroscope-java/releases/download/v2.1.2/pyroscope.jar

• Note: The path is /home/user/.gradle/daemon/8.14.2/ may vary depending on the user and the version of Gradle.

4. Launching the Pyroscope server:

• A docker-compose' file is created.yml in the root of the project with the following contents:

version: '3.8'
services:
  pyroscope:
    image: grafana/pyroscope:main-8c89229
    ports:
      - "4040:4040"
    command:
      - "server"

• The container starts:

docker-compose up -d

5. Gradle configuration for profiling:

• The gradle.properties file is created or edited in the root of the project with the following content, where the JVM arguments for the Gradle daemon are specified:

# JVM arguments for Gradle Daemon
org.gradle.jvmargs=-javaagent:pyroscope.jar -Dpyroscope.application.name=my-application{env=prod,version=1.0} -Dpyroscope.server.address=http://localhost:4040 -Dpyroscope.profile=cpu,alloc,lock,network,wall

• Important: pyroscope.jar must be in a path accessible by the Gradle daemon. In this case, it was placed in his cache.

6. Launching the profiled build:

• The project is being built. The '--no-daemonflag is used to ensure that a new Gradle daemon is started that picks up arguments fromgradle.properties'.

gradle clean build --no-daemon

After completing these steps, when going to the Pyroscope web interface (http://localhost:4040 ) the problem described above is observed.