aggregate template instantiations

[Trass3r]

Just looked at Instance Function and there were many individual entries of the form class<T>::method<U>.
It would be nice to have the option to aggregate them by method, by class or both (displayed like class<...>::method<...>).

[Viladoman]

Sounds good! That's a really good idea.

It think this might need to be an option for the data extractor itself, as I can't properly merge on the extension the accumulated times when dealing with nested initializations and such. As you don't want a child instantiation to count double time. Also collapsing template arguments on the class level will mean that nested structures will all have its template arguments collapsed.

This should be a simple string replace when reading the symbols.

[Trass3r]

I also saw that ClangBuildAnalyzer does something similar, using <$> notation, e.g.:
https://github.com/Trass3r/llvm-project/actions/runs/3479782039/jobs/5818745618#step:6:163

1080 ms: std::tuple_element<$>::type& std::get<$>(std::tuple<$>&) (145 times, avg 7 ms)

[Trass3r]

And WPA: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/cppblog/profiling-template-metaprograms-with-cpp-build-insights/
Thinking about it, maybe CompileScore could offer to open the .etl file that probably gets generated anyway in WPA for advanced analysis.
Then I could save that manual step:

vcperf -start -level3 MyVCSession
vcperf -stop -templates MyVCSession build.etl
wpa build.etl

[Viladoman]

I am not sure I follow the question here. Are we talking about the CompileScore App or Visual Studio Extension?

You can perform the same .etl generation that vcperf does using the ScoreDataExtractor. This way you can build the project once, extract the .etl/.ctl and then extract different .scor ( aggregation of data ) with different parameters and sizes.

When performing the stop and generating the scor directly, the .etl generation is skipped as it is not needed and we can instead parse the events directly and faster.

tldr: the ScoreDataExtractor can generate:

• build -> scor
• build -> etl/ctl
• etl/ctl -> scor

Technically if we want to allow the App to process .etl directly, we can just make the App perform :
ScoreDataExtractor.exe -extract -msvc -i Provided.etl -o TempScore.scor. And load that temporary file.

Tbh, the more flexible the input format is the better, it could even be a folder with the .json files that clang produces too.

Is this what you meant?

[Trass3r]

The Visual Studio extension.
I thought there would be a temporary .etl anyway that can be offered to open in WPA.

[Viladoman]

I understand, Adding an option in the extension options to also generate the etl when recording the events should pretty simple to add.

If I may ask, for what features do you need to use WPA?

[Trass3r]

Well it was inspired by this topic, aggregating template instantiations.
But of course in general WPA allows advanced usage like defining your own columns and grouping by select columns.
They have an interesting article series about what you can do:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build-insights/get-started-with-cpp-build-insights#articles
Includes a feature to estimate wall clock time impact in addition to just simply adding up the times.
And it's really useful to see average, min and max too (though I'd prefer median and deviation):
Neargye/magic_enum#239 (comment)

[Viladoman]

Closing this issue as the template arguments can now be collapsed on version 1.8.1 (enabled by default).

[Trass3r]

Thanks!
Should we create a separate ticket for

Adding an option in the extension options to also generate the etl when recording the events should pretty simple to add.

[Viladoman]

Yes please.