Support of --profiler NativeMemory command line argument

[WojciechNagorski]

In this PR I support command line argument:

--profiler NativeMemory

@adamsitnik I wonder if NativeMemoryDiagnoser shouldn't be named NativeMemoryProfiler?
We have MemoryDiagnoser but there is also EtwProfiler and ConcurrencyVisualizerProfiler.

[adamsitnik]

I wonder if NativeMemoryDiagnoser shouldn't be named NativeMemoryProfiler?

I am not sure. On the one hand, it's using EtwProfiler API to get the data. On the other, it reports the metrics and doesn't print a file path to the trace file so it's transparent to the end-user.

Does the trace file contain enough information to track the type names? Or something very useful in general? If so, you can rename it to Profiler but also print the paths to the trace files.

[WojciechNagorski]

I'm going to check it. If it is possible to trace the type names, I will change the name to Profiler.

[adamsitnik]

I'm going to check it. If it is possible to trace the type names, I will change the name to Profiler.

Great, please let me know once you got it so we can merge this PR and release 0.11.6

[WojciechNagorski]

@adamsitnik I know what I have to do to track the type names, using PerfView. It requires small changes in NativeMemoryDiagnoser, but after this changes .etl file will be a little bigger because we need to save information about stack traces. Do you think it will be a useful function?

[adamsitnik]

Do you think it will be a useful function?

Yes! I think that it would be nice if users could find out not only the native allocation size but also what was allocated if they open the trace file in a profiler.

[adamsitnik]

@wojtpl2 please let me know when this is ready to test ;)

[WojciechNagorski]

Not yet but today morning it will be. I just need test it and describe how it works.

[WojciechNagorski]

It is ready to test.
In this test, I allocate an array of int twice and an array of Point once.

• An array of int with 200 length -> 200 * 4B = 800B
• An array of int with 150 length -> 150 * 4B = 600B
• An array of Point (value int X and int Y) with 200 length -> 200 * 2 * 4B = 1600B

SUM 3000B
There are output from BDN:


This is confirmation of these values:

There are print screans from PerfView with information about types.

I didn't have to make any changes in MemoryNativeProfiler because heap session logs stack traces. Then PerfView can read type from stack trace:

[WojciechNagorski]

@adamsitnik I have a question when you want to release a new version of BDN? I would like to know how much time I have to write my blog about this topic.

[adamsitnik]

Thank you @wojtpl2 !

[adamsitnik]

I have a question when you want to release a new version of BDN? I would like to know how much time I have to write my blog about this topic.

My plan is to finish #1188 on Monday and then we should be able to release a new version by the end of next week