Speedprof

what is it

Speedprof is an LD_PRELOAD based itimer (or hard real-time, or builtin CPU timer) based snapshot profiler. It samples at regular intervals (tweakable by reading the code ;-) and then presents a rather sexy data mining view so you can wind back full stack information - what function called what and when, self & cumulative times down trace paths etc.

how to get it

Checkout 'memprof' from GNOME CVS:

   export CVSROOT=':pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.gnome.org:/cvs/gnome'
   cvs login
   cvs -z3 co -r sled-fixes memprof

install it

   ./autogen.sh
   make
   sudo make install

how to use it

   speedprof ./soffice.bin -writer

Of course, the most useful mode is to use the 'reset' button - ie. get OO.o going to the state you're interested in. Hit reset - do something slow - hit 'Profile' and wander the trace.

downsides

• sometimes crashes the app - but hey, sometimes the app crashes under it's own steam too - hard to know whom to blame.
• doesn't work well with old systems (pre TLS / NPTL)
• doesn't like very long C++ symbols much - makes the columns somewhat unpleasant to use, needs some app tweakage.