grid - Go Routine Inspect Dumps

GRID provides both a go module to parse dump files (grid/dump) and an executable GUI (grid) to show the results of the parse (cmd/grid). The goals is to aid with human interpretation of golang go routine dumps. In large programs with many go routines (due to workers, threads, etc.) it can be difficult to see which go routines are the same (stack wise) and which ones are unique.

GRID's parser provides both the raw parse and "de-duped" go routines. Go routines have a signature that is calculated by the go routine's stack trace at the source file and line level. The go routines signature is then matched against all other go routines in the dump to group them together.

The Parser: Dump

The dump module can take in a go routine dump file and produces a Dump struct. It can be included in your golang project with your own UI or CLI output. It is developed separate from the UI grid. It can be invoked by the dump.ParseFile() function which has the following signature:

ParseFile(filePath string, logger Logger) (*Dump, error)

With an example invocation of:

    dump, err := dump.ParseFile(pathToDumpFile, logrus.New())

The first argument, filePath, is simply the path to the go routine dump file. The second argument, logger, is any logger you wish that satisfies the interface requirements (e.g. logrus).

The result of a parse is either error or a Dump struct.

type Dump struct {
	Routines []*Routine
	Stats    *Stats
}

Dump structs has the raw parsed Routines as well as a Stats struct that contain structs that have been organized by function and type as well as having duplicate stacks reduced to 1 entry. All the raw routines still are available inside the Stats struct if needed.

The GUI: GRID

The GRID UI is an immediate mode UI. It can be invoked by downloading a release or building this project and running:

> grid gui <path.to.dump>

Upcomming Features

1. Dump searching
2. Opening 0..n dump files
3. Dump export
4. UX improvements

Building This Project

This project uses AllenDang's GIU library and is subject to that project's build requirements. See your OS's requirements here.

Once complete, building GRID can be accomplished as follows:

1. Check out the repository
2. Navigate to checkout repository
3. Install via go

go install ./...

If you wish to make the binary portable, ensure you include ldflags/extldflags to create a statically linked binary. For hints, see this projects release workflow.