Introduction

The perf_to_profile binary can be used to turn a perf.data file, which is generated by the linux profiler, perf, into a profile.proto file which can be visualized using the tool pprof.

For details on pprof, see https://github.com/google/pprof

THIS IS NOT AN OFFICIAL GOOGLE PRODUCT

Prerequisites to build

• Install dependencies

  sudo apt-get -y install g++ git libelf-dev libcap-dev
  

• At least g++-5 or clang-7

Compile and Test

To install all dependences and build the binary, run the following commands. These were tested on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS:

Compile

• Install bazel by following the instructions here.

• Install dependencies and build perf_to_profile using bazel

  git clone https://github.com/teslamotors/perf_data_converter.git
  cd perf_data_converter
  bazel build src:perf_to_profile
  

Place the perf_to_profile binary in a place accessible from your PATH (e.g. /usr/local/bin).

Running tests

• There are a small number of tests that verify the basic functionality. To run these, after successful compilation, run:

  bazel test src:all
  bazel test src/quipper:all
  

Note: Executables generated using bazel build are available under the directory bazel-bin/.

Usage

• Profile a command using perf, for example:

  perf record /bin/ls
  

• Recent versions of pprof will automatically invoke perf_to_profile:

  pprof -web perf.data
  

Contribution

We appreciate your help!

Note that perf data converter and quipper projects do not use GitHub pull requests, and that we use the issue tracker for bug reports.