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gprof Observations
- From: "Bhattacharya, Soubhik" <soubhik_bhattacharya at mentorg dot com>
- To: binutils at sources dot redhat dot com
- Date: Thu, 03 Jul 2003 18:03:21 +0530
- Subject: gprof Observations
- Organization: Mentor Graphics
hi folks!
i wrote a small program and played around with `gprof' for sometime. i
want to share my observations with you. corrections, criticism, and
suggestions (to workaround the limitations of gprof) are welcome.
I've attached a tar gzipped version of the directory containing sources
of the test programs, profiles generated by `gprof' (flat and
call-graph) and a README, containing the details of the experimentation
and my observations.
What follows is a summary of my observations :
1. if a function `foo()' is not compiled with -pg then gprof fails to
determine the callers of and no. of calls to `foo()'. however, if
`foo()' runs long enuff then it reliably estimates its self-time.
2. using -pg during linking ensures that the program is linked with a
special gprof specific start file. this is the minimum requirement for
gprof to be able to generate some useful information (a flat profile).
3. gprof fails to gather profiling info (self-time, no. of calls,
calling functions) of a function residing in a shared object. any
suggestion? i searched the net to find a couple of mails on a similar
topic (http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnu-utils/2001-07/msg00284.html
http://sources.redhat.com/ml/binutils/2003-03/msg00208.html), which,
sadly, went unanswered.
if obs 3. is correct, it shud be considered a serious limitation,
restricting gprof's usefulness in modern software engineering.
cheers!
soubhik.
--
-0-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-0-1-2-3-4-5-6-7
Soubhik Bhattacharya
Associate Member Technical Staff
Mentor Graphics
Hyderabad, India.
-0-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-0-1-2-3-4-5-6-7
Attachment:
gproftest.tar.gz
Description: GNU Zip compressed data