to the control port
.RE
.IP \[bu] 2
-\f[I]sample[=TYPE[/FREQ]]\f[]: collect statistical samples of the
+\f[I]sample[=FREQ]\f[]: collect statistical samples of the
program behaviour.
The default is to collect a 100 times per second (100 Hz) the
instruction pointer.
-This is equivalent to the value \[lq]cycles/100\[rq].
+This is equivalent to the value \[lq]100\[rq].
A value of zero for \f[I]FREQ\f[] effectively disables sampling.
-On some systems, like with recent Linux kernels, it is possible to
-cause the sampling to happen for other events provided by the
-performance counters of the cpu.
-In this case, \f[I]TYPE\f[] can be one of:
-.RS 2
-.IP \[bu] 2
-\f[I]cycles\f[]: processor cycles
-.IP \[bu] 2
-\f[I]instr\f[]: executed instructions
-.IP \[bu] 2
-\f[I]cacherefs\f[]: cache references
-.IP \[bu] 2
-\f[I]cachemiss\f[]: cache misses
.IP \[bu] 2
-\f[I]branches\f[]: executed branches
-.IP \[bu] 2
-\f[I]branchmiss\f[]: mispredicted branches
-.RE
-.IP \[bu] 2
-\f[I]time=TIMER\f[]: use the TIMER timestamp mode.
-TIMER can have the following values:
-.RS 2
-.IP \[bu] 2
-\f[I]fast\f[]: a usually faster but possibly more inaccurate timer
-.RE
+\f[I]heapshot-on-shutdown\f[]: collect heap shot data when the runtime
+shuts down.
.IP \[bu] 2
\f[I]maxframes=NUM\f[]: when a stack trace needs to be performed,
collect \f[I]NUM\f[] frames at the most.
and time, then do according to \f[I]OUTSPEC\f[]:
.RS 2
.IP \[bu] 2
-if \f[I]OUTSPEC\f[] begins with a \f[I]|\f[] character, execute the
-rest as a program and feed the data to its standard input
+If \f[I]OUTSPEC\f[] begins with a \f[I]|\f[] character, execute the
+rest as a program and feed the data to its standard input.
.IP \[bu] 2
-if \f[I]OUTSPEC\f[] begins with a \f[I]-\f[] character, use the
-rest of OUTSPEC as the filename, but force overwrite any existing
-file by that name
+If \f[I]OUTSPEC\f[] begins with a \f[I]#\f[] character, parse the
+rest as a file descriptor number, and feed the data to this file
+descriptor.
.IP \[bu] 2
otherwise write the data the the named file: note that is a file by
-that name already exists, a warning is issued and profiling is
-disabled.
+that name already exists, it is truncated.
.RE
.IP \[bu] 2
\f[I]report\f[]: the profiling data is sent to mprof-report, which
\f[I]heapshot\f[]: perform a heapshot as soon as possible
.RE
.IP \[bu] 2
-\f[I]counters\f[]: sample counters values every 1 second. This allow
-a really lightweight way to have insight in some of the runtime key
-metrics. Counters displayed in non verbose mode are : Methods from AOT,
-Methods JITted using mono JIT, Methods JITted using LLVM, Total time
-spent JITting (sec), User Time, System Time, Total Time, Working Set,
-Private Bytes, Virtual Bytes, Page Faults and CPU Load Average (1min,
-5min and 15min).
-.IP \[bu] 2
-\f[I]coverage\f[]: collect code coverage data. This implies enabling
-the \f[I]calls\f[] option.
-.IP \[bu] 2
-\f[I]onlycoverage\f[]: can only be used with \f[I]coverage\f[]. This
-disables most other events so that the profiler mostly only collects
-coverage data.
+\f[I]nocounters\f[]: disables sampling of runtime and performance
+counters, which is normally done every 1 second.
.RE
.SS Analyzing the profile data
.PP
.IP \[bu] 2
\f[I]counters\f[]: counters samples
.IP \[bu] 2
-\f[I]coverage\f[]: code coverage data
-.IP \[bu] 2
\f[I]stats\f[]: event statistics
.PP
It is possible to limit some of the data displayed to a timeframe
To print it to a file, instead, use the option:
.PP
\f[B]--out=FILENAME\f[]
-.SS Processing code coverage data
-.PP
-If you ran the profiler with the \f[I]coverage\f[] option, you can
-process the collected coverage data into an XML file by running
-mprof-report like this:
-.PP
-\f[B]mprof-report --coverage-out=coverage.xml output.mlpd\f[]
.SS Dealing with profiler slowness
.PP
If the profiler needs to collect lots of data, the execution of the
needs to be inspected.
The \f[I]MODE\f[] parameter of the \f[I]heapshot\f[] option can be
used to reduce the frequency of the heap shots.
-.IP "\f[I]Reduce the timestamp overhead\f[]" 4
-.Sp
-On many operating systems or architectures what actually slows down
-profiling is the function provided by the system to get timestamp
-information.
-The \f[I]time=fast\f[] profiler option can be usually used to speed
-up this operation, but, depending on the system, time accounting
-may have some level of approximation (though statistically the data
-should be still fairly valuable).
.SS Dealing with the size of the data files
.PP
When collecting a lot of information about a profiled program, huge
projects / mono.git / blobdiff