| .\" Copyright (c) 1983, 1990 The Regents of the University of California. |
| .\" All rights reserved. |
| .\" |
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| .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ``AS IS'' AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED |
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| .\" @(#)gprof.1 6.6 (Berkeley) 7/24/90 |
| .\" |
| .TH GPROF 1 "January 29, 1993" |
| .SH NAME |
| gprof \- display call graph profile data |
| .SH SYNOPSIS |
| .B gprof [ \-abcsz ] [ \-e|\-E |
| .I name |
| .B ] [ \-f|\-F |
| .I name |
| .B ] |
| .B [ \-k |
| .I fromname toname |
| .B ] [ |
| .I objfile |
| .B [ |
| .I gmon.out |
| .B ] |
| .B ] |
| .SH DESCRIPTION |
| .B gprof |
| produces an execution profile of C, Pascal, or Fortran77 programs. |
| The effect of called routines is incorporated in the profile of each caller. |
| The profile data is taken from the call graph profile file |
| \&(`gmon.out' default) which is created by programs |
| that are compiled with the |
| .B \-pg |
| option of |
| .BR cc ( 1 ) , |
| .BR pc ( 1 ) , |
| and |
| .BR f77 ( 1 ) . |
| The |
| .B \-pg |
| option also links in versions of the library routines |
| that are compiled for profiling. |
| .B Gprof |
| reads the given object file (the default is `a.out') |
| and establishes the relation between its symbol table |
| and the call graph profile from `gmon.out'. |
| If more than one profile file is specified, |
| the |
| .B gprof |
| output shows the sum of the profile information in the given profile files. |
| .PP |
| .B Gprof |
| calculates the amount of time spent in each routine. |
| Next, these times are propagated along the edges of the call graph. |
| Cycles are discovered, and calls into a cycle are made to share the time |
| of the cycle. |
| The first listing shows the functions |
| sorted according to the time they represent |
| including the time of their call graph descendants. |
| Below each function entry is shown its (direct) call graph children, |
| and how their times are propagated to this function. |
| A similar display above the function shows how this function's time and the |
| time of its descendants is propagated to its (direct) call graph parents. |
| .PP |
| Cycles are also shown, with an entry for the cycle as a whole and |
| a listing of the members of the cycle and their contributions to the |
| time and call counts of the cycle. |
| .PP |
| Second, a flat profile is given, |
| similar to that provided by |
| .BR prof ( 1 ) . |
| This listing gives the total execution times, the call counts, |
| the time in milliseconds the call spent in the routine itself, and |
| the time in milliseconds the call spent in the routine itself including |
| its descendants. |
| .PP |
| Finally, an index of the function names is provided. |
| .SH OPTIONS |
| The following options are available: |
| .TP |
| .B \-a |
| suppresses the printing of statically declared functions. |
| If this option is given, all relevant information about the static function |
| (e.g., time samples, calls to other functions, calls from other functions) |
| belongs to the function loaded just before the static function in the |
| \&`objfile' file. |
| .TP |
| .B \-b |
| suppresses the printing of a description of each field in the profile. |
| .TP |
| .B \-c |
| the static call graph of the program is discovered by a heuristic |
| that examines the text space of the object file. |
| Static-only parents or children are shown |
| with call counts of 0. |
| .TP |
| .BI "\-e " name |
| suppresses the printing of the graph profile entry for routine |
| .I name |
| and all its descendants |
| (unless they have other ancestors that aren't suppressed). |
| More than one |
| .B \-e |
| option may be given. |
| Only one |
| .I name |
| may be given with each |
| .B \-e |
| option. |
| .TP |
| .BI "\-E " name |
| suppresses the printing of the graph profile entry for routine |
| .I name |
| (and its descendants) as |
| .B \-e , |
| above, and also excludes the time spent in |
| .I name |
| (and its descendants) from the total and percentage time computations. |
| (For example, |
| .BI "\-E " mcount |
| .BI "\-E " mcleanup |
| is the default.) |
| .TP |
| .BI "\-f " name |
| prints the graph profile entry of only the specified routine |
| .I name |
| and its descendants. |
| More than one |
| .B \-f |
| option may be given. |
| Only one |
| .I name |
| may be given with each |
| .B \-f |
| option. |
| .TP |
| .BI "\-F " name |
| prints the graph profile entry of only the routine |
| .I name |
| and its descendants (as |
| .B \-f , |
| above) and also uses only the times of the printed routines |
| in total time and percentage computations. |
| More than one |
| .B \-F |
| option may be given. |
| Only one |
| .I name |
| may be given with each |
| .B \-F |
| option. |
| The |
| .B \-F |
| option |
| overrides |
| the |
| .B \-E |
| option. |
| .TP |
| .BI "\-k " "fromname toname" |
| will delete any arcs from routine |
| .I fromname |
| to routine |
| .IR toname . |
| This can be used to break undesired cycles. |
| More than one |
| .B \-k |
| option may be given. |
| Only one pair of routine names may be given with each |
| .B \-k |
| option. |
| .TP |
| .B \-s |
| a profile file `gmon.sum' is produced that represents |
| the sum of the profile information in all the specified profile files. |
| This summary profile file may be given to later |
| executions of gprof (probably also with a |
| .BR \-s ) |
| to accumulate profile data across several runs of an `objfile' file. |
| .TP |
| .B -v |
| prints the version number for gprof, and then exits. |
| .TP |
| .B -z |
| displays routines that have zero usage (as shown by call counts |
| and accumulated time). |
| This is useful with the |
| .B \-c |
| option for discovering which routines were never called. |
| .PP |
| .SH FILES |
| .ta \w'gmon.sum 'u |
| a.out the namelist and text space. |
| .br |
| gmon.out dynamic call graph and profile. |
| .br |
| gmon.sum summarized dynamic call graph and profile. |
| .SH SEE ALSO |
| .BR monitor ( 3 ) , |
| .BR profil ( 2 ) , |
| .BR cc ( 1 ) , |
| .BR prof ( 1 ) |
| .sp |
| ``An Execution Profiler for Modular Programs'', |
| by S. Graham, P. Kessler, M. McKusick; |
| .I |
| Software \- Practice and Experience, |
| Vol. 13, pp. 671-685, 1983. |
| .sp |
| ``gprof: A Call Graph Execution Profiler'', |
| by S. Graham, P. Kessler, M. McKusick; |
| .I |
| Proceedings of the SIGPLAN '82 Symposium on Compiler Construction, |
| SIGPLAN Notices, Vol. 17, No 6, pp. 120-126, June 1982. |
| .SH HISTORY |
| .B Gprof |
| appeared in 4.2 BSD. |
| .SH BUGS |
| The granularity of the sampling is shown, but remains |
| statistical at best. |
| We assume that the time for each execution of a function |
| can be expressed by the total time for the function divided |
| by the number of times the function is called. |
| Thus the time propagated along the call graph arcs to the function's |
| parents is directly proportional to the number of times that |
| arc is traversed. |
| .PP |
| Parents that are not themselves profiled will have the time of |
| their profiled children propagated to them, but they will appear |
| to be spontaneously invoked in the call graph listing, and will |
| not have their time propagated further. |
| Similarly, signal catchers, even though profiled, will appear |
| to be spontaneous (although for more obscure reasons). |
| Any profiled children of signal catchers should have their times |
| propagated properly, unless the signal catcher was invoked during |
| the execution of the profiling routine, in which case all is lost. |
| .PP |
| The profiled program must call |
| .BR exit ( 2 ) |
| or return normally for the profiling information to be saved |
| in the `gmon.out' file. |