straceprof

straceprof is a profiler designed for multi-process programs. straceprof can take profile of any process when you can run it under strace. It is particularly well-suited for profiling build processes such as those initiated by make, cmake, shell scripts, or docker build.

Quick start

Run the following commands.

$ sudo apt-get install strace
$ pip install straceprof
$ strace \
    --trace=execve,execveat,exit,exit_group \
    --follow-forks \
    --string-limit=1000 \
    -ttt \
    --output=straceprof.log \
    <command to profile>
$ straceprof \
    --log=straceprof.log \
    --output=straceprof.png

You will get a nice image!

Motivation

Software compilation often involves numerous processes, including compilers, assemblers, linkers, and file copying operations. These processes are typically coordinated using tools like make.

A common challenge in software development is the significant amount of time required to build software. For instance, building a programming language processor might take as long as 20 minutes. To expedite this process, it is essential to profile the build to pinpoint performance bottlenecks.

However, profiling build processes can be complex due to the wide range of build systems available. While some build systems incorporate built-in profiling capabilities, others do not. Furthermore, developers frequently combine multiple build systems using shell scripts or Dockerfile to construct a single software product.

To address these challenges, an effective profiler should be versatile and user-friendly. It must be capable of analyzing entire build processes, regardless of the underlying build system. Additionally, it should be suitable for various environments, including CI systems like GitHub Actions and containerized environments, where running privileged profilers such as perf may be restricted.

In conclusion, we require a profiler that can be seamlessly integrated into diverse build processes without demanding elevated privileges.

Installation

On the computer you run the build process

For Ubuntu,

$ sudo apt-get install strace

I'm sure you can install strace on any other distributions easily.

On the computer you want to generate the profile image

$ pip install straceprof

Usage

First, you need to generate a strace log file. You can generate a strace log file using the following command:

strace \
    --trace=execve,execveat,exit,exit_group \
    --follow-forks \
    --string-limit=1000 \
    -ttt \
    --output=<path to strace log file> \
    <command to profile>

Note

Do not change the options for strace command other than --output and <command to profile>. straceprof assumes you run strace with these options.

Then, you can generate a profile graph using the following command:

straceprof \
    --log=<path to strace log file> \
    --output=<path to output image file>

Other options are:

  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --log LOG             strace log file
  --output              OUTPUT_IMAGE
                        output plot file
  --minimum-duration-sec MINIMUM_DURATION_SEC
                        The minimum duration of a process to be plotted. Shorter processes are omitted.
  --title TITLE         Title of the plot. When you don't specify this, the path to the log file is used.
  --width WIDTH         Width of the figure in pixels
  --height HEIGHT       Height of the figure in pixels