Fuchsia

Recording a Fuchsia trace

This document describes how to record a trace with Fuchsia's tracing system.

Prerequisites

Before you attempt to record a trace, make sure you have done the following:

  • Registered your component as a trace provider. See Registering a trace provider.

  • Added tracing in your code. See Adding tracing in your code.

  • Included the tools to your Fuchsia build. The core product and most other products include tools by default. If your build configuration does not include tools bundle by default, then you can manually add it with fx set:

Use the utilities

Traces are recorded with the trace utility on a Fuchsia target. The ffx trace start command, which you can run from your development host, calls the trace utility on your Fuchsia target.

You can record a trace from your Fuchsia target from your development host or directly from the Fuchsia target.

From a development host

To record a trace for a Fuchsia target from a development host, run the following command:

ffx trace start [--duration <SECONDS>]

ffx trace start does the following:

  • Starts a trace on the Fuchsia target with the default options.
  • Runs the tracing until the Enter key is pressed, or the duration is reached if provided.
  • Prints the trace results from the Fuchsia target device to an output file on your development host.

For a complete list of the ffx trace start options, run ffx trace start --help.

Once you have the trace output file, you can convert and analyze that trace file.

From a Fuchsia target

To record a trace directly from a Fuchsia target, run the following command in a shell on your target:

This saves your trace in /data/trace.json on your Fuchsia target by default. For more information on the trace utility, run trace --help at a Fuchsia shell.

Once you have the trace output file, you can convert and analyze that trace file.