RbProf - The AspectR profiler

Version:          0.2.1
Release date:     2002-01-29
Home page:        http://aspectr.sf.net/rbprof
Tarball:          RbProf is included in the AspectR tarball below
AspectR tarball:  http://prdownloads.sf.net/aspectr/aspectr-0-3-5.tar.gz
Author:           Robert Feldt
Email:            feldt@ce.chalmers.se

What is it?

A profiler for Ruby programs. It's faster than the standard profiler and gives you information tailored to your needs.

Main features:

Fast (typically 5-10 times faster than Ruby's standard profiler)
Focus on methods defined in program being profiled (ie. as a default does NOT profile Ruby's methods)
Explicitly include Ruby's methods you want them to be profiled
Reports from where a method was called, the call site.
Summarizes difference to previous profiles; good when you iteratively speed up your program.
Can report on distribution of arguments in method calls (which indicates whether you have something to gain by memoizing the method)

Limitations:

Does not measure time spent in class methods. Should not be more difficult than instance methods but haven't been tested yet. Coming soon to a version near you (TM) :-)
Cannot measure time spent in :id, :class, :type methods or in methods with a leading underscore in their name.
Alpha release so there are bugs and it will likely fail for some programs. If so please report your problems.

Installation?

Install aspectr (by following the instruction in the AspectR README)
Go into the aspects/profiler directory (where this file resides)
install RbProf: ruby ../../install.rb

Why is it needed?

Standard profiler (profile.rb) is slow (typically slows down your program by a factor of 60-200).
Standard profiler gives you too much information.
- You frequently do not want to know the amount of time spent in Ruby's methods. RbProf lets you choose if you want to include them.
Standard profiler mixes results so you can't resolve their origin
- If a method is called from many places you don't know which invocation of it is the problem. RbProf shows you the call sites to overcome this.

Example of using RbProf on the command line?

$ ruby -r rbprof your_program.rb

will print the profile to stderr (and as a binary to your_program.profile).

Example of using RbProf from within a program?

        require 'rbprof'
        $profiler.profile_methods(:<<, Bignum)
        #... rest of your program ...

will profile the methods defined in your program and Bignum#<<. The profile will be printed to stderr (and as a binary to your_program.profile). Be sure to require rbprof in the first file in your program since it will only profile methods defined after the require.

Requirements?

AspectR (but you probably already have it since RbProf is part of AspectR).

Otherwise it should work with any Ruby >= 1.6.

I've successfully used RbProf with Ruby 1.7.2 (2002-01-08) and cygwin 1.1.8 (gcc version 2.95.2-6) on Windows 2000 Professional.

NOTE THAT THIS IS AN ALPHA RELEASE SO THERE WILL LIKELY BE BUGS AND THE API MIGHT CHANGE.

RbProf has troubles profiling methods named:
id, type, class and methods with names starting with underscore...
RbProf will not be accurate when methods are very small. Ruby's timing facilities are limited.
There is no rock solid way to know in Ruby when methods are defined. RbProf uses a trick that relies on Object.method_added and Object.singleton_method_added. If you redefine the former it should still work but if you first override the latter and then the former it will not be notified when you define new methods => will not profile those methods.
When you alias a method it is considered being defined so will be profiled.

Plans for the future?

See TODO.

Do you have comments or questions?

I'd appreciate if you drop me a note if you're using RbProf. If there are some known users I'll be more motivated to packing up additions / new versions and post them to RAA.

Please give feedback!

Happy coding!

Robert Feldt, feldt@ce.chalmers.se