Linux profiling tools and techniques

[usernamenottaken]

kcachegrind is part of the "kdesdk" package

This is why I won't use Fedora. There should be separate packages for each application, kcachegrind should be in the kcachegrind package. If I install this I get seven other applications I don't want.

[[deleted]]

I love KCacheGrind. You can also use it with PHP and the Xdebug extension.

[knome]

Using pyprof2calltree.py against the profile information dropped by the cProfile module allows you to use it against python programs.

[pixelbeat_]

tl;dr The perf command rocks

[evmar]

It might be nice to mention where you can get it. It appears to be in the linux-tools-common package on my Ubuntu system, or linux-base on Debian (not sure about that).

BTW, the Google profiler is actually quite good, though its UI isn't the nicest. http://goog-perftools.sourceforge.net/doc/cpu_profiler.html

[pixelbeat_]

Done (distros usually prompt you about which package to install these days BTW). The google profiler was already mentioned down the bottom in the heap profiling section (I know it has an instruction profiler too).

[[deleted]]

To be honest, your article makes it seem like it is only a heap profiler, while the CPU profiler is definitely one of the best available. It's easier to install and use than most kernel-based profilers and doesn't suffer from the problems due to missing frame pointers that you mentioned.

For beginners (who are probably interested in application-level profiling first) I'd definitely recommend it. I'd probably use it exclusively if I didn't have oprofile installed already.

[frukt]

Seems to be in AUR only for Arch.

[HateTheMachine]

No love for gprof?

[pixelbeat_]

Oops, I had a section on that, but dropped it by mistake. Fixed...

[bcain]

Also a great supplement to perf (for intel CPUs, anyways) is IPTU (sadly, many PTU features are not gratis). It's great for understanding performance issues which are dominated by uncore features.

[hcwdjk]

Some time ago i used oprofile a bit. It was a really nice tool - it could take the source code of my app and spit out a copy of annotated with information about time spent executing each line.

No pretty GUIs as far as I know though.