Re: Future plans for gprof

[Dan Kegel <dank at kegel dot com>]

Daniel Jacobowitz wrote:
> 
> On Fri, Aug 23, 2002 at 09:02:47AM -0700, Dan Kegel wrote:
> > "Desmond, Colin" wrote:
> > > I am working on the KProf front-end for gprof, as well as some other
> > > profilers, and I was wondering what the future plans are for gprof, in terms
> > > of additional functionality.
> >
> > For starters:
> > * support for multiple threads
> > * support for large programs
> >
> > (see http://www.kegel.com/gprof.html )
> >
> > I can also imagine
> > * ability to start and stop profiling during execution
> 
> That's monstartup (undocumented in glibc) and moncontrol (undocumented
> and unprototyped in glibc).  They already work, I believe.

I have a funny feeling they'd need to be changed quite a bit
if we wanted to support multiple threads well; they currently
only affect the current thread.

I can't wait for Linux's thread support to mature so we can
nail down stuff like this.

(I'm quite annoyed that the project most actively working on Linux thread
support, NGPT, is using Sun's complex, nonscalable, and obsolete
N:M threading model.  Since even Sun is moving away from that
-- see http://java.sun.com/docs/hotspot/threads/threads.html --
it's a mystery why NGPT is diving into it.)

- Dan