Copyright (c) 1998, 1999 Nickel City Software

NAME

fperf ("function performance")

DESCRIPTION

This is a function performance checking tool. While working with C++ and
multithreaded projects, gprof didn't perform so well. This is a
replacement.

HOW IT WORKS

This package includes 4 pieces. 

as	this is an "as" wrapper. under linux, it seems that it is
	sufficient to place it in your path so that it is found *before*
	the real "as" (/usr/bin/as). under solaris, it appears that
	gcc is too smart and you need to 

	setenv COMPILER_PATH /path/to/mchk/as

	before compiling. This will encourage gcc to use our wrapper
	instead of the real "as".

	The wrapper picks off the last command line parameter (assumed
	to generally be the assembly source code file) and feeds it into
	insert_ARCH.pl. "as" will try to figure out what "ARCH" to 
	substitute by calling the "uname -p" command.

insert_ARCH.pl
	this script has two flavors. ARCH can be "i386" or "sparc". 
	it is a perl script that will read an assembly source file and
	attempt to stealthily insert code to keep track of function
	calls and execution times.

	if we detect a main() routine, we'll insert a call
	to perfexit() immediately before main() exits so that we can 
	dump the statistics that we've gathered. If your program exits
	abnormally, no statistics will be dumped.

	The statistics are in the form of a binary file. 

libfperf.a
	This library contains various routines that assist in tracking
	performance. You should link this into your executable.

Limitations

"longjumps" will throw things off.

Statistics File Format

The statistics file contains 

PC samples duration called-from-PC



Jeff Murphy
jcmurphy@jeffmurphy.com
30 Mar 1999