GREsau.Tracing

GREsau.Tracing is a library to perform performance tracing of .NET Core applications. Essentially, it is a simplified alternative to dotnet-trace, consumable as a C# library rather than a CLI tool.

GREsau.Tracing will only output nettrace-format files. These can be viewed on Windows using PerfView, or converted to speedscope-format using dotnet-trace's convert command, and then viewed at https://www.speedscope.app.

# Converts nettrace file to speedscope, writing to trace.speedscope.json
> dotnet-trace convert --format Speedscope trace.nettrace

This library makes use of Microsoft.Diagnostics.NETCore.Client. If you're looking for something more powerful/flexible and you're willing to accept the complexity that comes with that, consider using that library directly.

Installing

Install via NuGet:

> dotnet add package GREsau.Tracing

Basic Usage

To trace the current process for a period of time, saving the output file as "trace.nettrace":

var client = new TraceClient();
await client.CollectAsync("trace.nettrace", TimeSpan.FromMinutes(1));

You can also trace a different process by passing in its ID:

var client = new TraceClient(123);
await client.CollectAsync("trace.nettrace", TimeSpan.FromMinutes(1));

By default, TraceClient will track CPU usage and general .NET runtime information, equivalent to running dotnet-trace with the cpu-sampling (default) profile. If you want to trace something different, you can pass in a collection of Microsoft.Diagnostics.NETCore.Client.EventPipeProviders:

var gcCollectProvider = new EventPipeProvider(
    "Microsoft-Windows-DotNETRuntime",
    EventLevel.Informational,
    (long)(ClrTraceEventParser.Keywords.GC | ClrTraceEventParser.Keywords.Exception));
var client = new TraceClient(providers: new[] { gcCollectProvider });
await client.CollectAsync("trace.nettrace", TimeSpan.FromMinutes(1));