Flame Graphs for terminal

This is an implementation of flame graphs right in the terminal.

For an overview of flame graphs and original implementation, check Brendan Gregg's website

While not as powerful as GUI tools, having chart right in the terminal is more convenient in case of iterative process, like:

1. run a profile on remote machine
2. visualize and study the profile
3. make changes in code/workload/app-level settings/profiling settings/...
4. repeat

In specific case of Linux perf flamereport can be seen as an alternative to running 'perf report'.

Flame graphs overview

Please check http://www.brendangregg.com/flamegraphs.html

Usage example

With provided sample

$ python flame.py < samples/osx_dtrace

reproducing provided sample on Mac OS

1. Run dtrace with -q quiet flag:

sudo dtrace -q -x stackframes=100 -n 'profile-99 /arg0/ { @[stack()] = count(); } tick-10s { exit(0); }' -o dtrace_stacks

2. Get https://github.com/brendangregg/FlameGraph (needed for stack folding)

$ git clone https://github.com/brendangregg/FlameGraph.git

3. Now collapse stacks:

$ ./FlameGraph/stackcollapse.pl < dtrace_stacks > stacks

4. Run:

$ python ./flametui/flame.py < stacks

With Linux perf

1. Get https://github.com/brendangregg/FlameGraph (needed for stack folding)

$ git clone https://github.com/brendangregg/FlameGraph.git

2. Do system-wide profile:

$ perf record -F 999 -a -g -- sleep 10

3. Collapse stacks:

$ perf script | ./FlameGraph/stackcollapse-perf.pl > stacks

4. View visualization

$ python ./flametui/flame.py < ./stacks

Interactive commands

• left/h - select the block to the left
• right/l - select the block to the right
• up/k - select the block above
• down/j - select the block below
• f - focus. Zoom into selected frame; makes it fit whole width, hides the siblings.
• p - pin to top. This zooms into selected frame (like 'f') and hides parent frames. This is useful for deep traces, as there's no scrolling functionality.
• F - hard focus. Zoom into all frames with title of selected frame, pin them to top.
• x - eXclude frame. Removes the selected frame, its children and shrinks parents accordingly. This is useful when the graph is dominated by few large but not particularly interesting frames; It provides a more convenient view compared to focusing on 'smaller but more interesting' frames individually.
• r - reset focus. Resets the focus but keeps exculded frames excluded.
• R - hard reset, brings everything to default view; Useful after exclusions.
• single mouse click - select the block
• double mouse click - zoom into the block. Equivalent to 'f'
• / - search
• n/N - select next/prev block within the highlighted set of views
• q - quit

Output description

Simple selection with auto-highlight matching frames

Selecting a cell with multiple frames in it. Pressing 'n' on previous example would bring us here:

In case 'x' was used to hide some of the less interesting frames, status will show how much was excluded:

Graph element examples

• '[foo---]' -- individual frame.
• '-' - also individual frame.
• '+' - aggregated frame view which contains several frames. Selecting it will show the details in the status area. Might have hidden descendents.

Known limitations

• No color-coding for parts of stack traces (kernel/userspace/vm/native/etc.)