Profiling Interface

Profiler Operation

The following methods can be used by dynamic profiler methods to monitor different aspects of the program.

A custom profiler will have one public method defined in the shared library which is the entry point that Mono calls at startup, it has the following signature: 

	void mono_profiler_startup (const char *desc)

Where "desc" is the set of arguments that were passed from the command line. This routine will call mono_profiler_install to activate the profiler and will install one or more filters (one of the various mono_profiler_install_ functions).

In addition, a profiler developer will typically call mono_profiler_set_events to register which kinds of traces should be enabled, these can be an OR-ed combination of the following: 

	MONO_PROFILE_NONE
        MONO_PROFILE_APPDOMAIN_EVENTS
        MONO_PROFILE_ASSEMBLY_EVENTS
        MONO_PROFILE_MODULE_EVENTS    
        MONO_PROFILE_CLASS_EVENTS     
        MONO_PROFILE_JIT_COMPILATION  
        MONO_PROFILE_INLINING         
        MONO_PROFILE_EXCEPTIONS       
        MONO_PROFILE_ALLOCATIONS      
        MONO_PROFILE_GC               
        MONO_PROFILE_THREADS          
        MONO_PROFILE_REMOTING         
        MONO_PROFILE_TRANSITIONS      
        MONO_PROFILE_ENTER_LEAVE      
        MONO_PROFILE_COVERAGE         
        MONO_PROFILE_INS_COVERAGE     
        MONO_PROFILE_STATISTICAL

Developers can change the set of monitored events at runtime by calling mono_profiler_set_events.

mono_profiler_install
Syntax
void mono_profiler_install (MonoProfiler *prof, MonoProfileFunc callback)

Parameters
prof a MonoProfiler structure pointer, or a pointer to a derived structure.
callback the function to invoke at shutdown
Description

Use mono_profiler_install to activate profiling in the Mono runtime. Typically developers of new profilers will create a new structure whose first field is a MonoProfiler and put any extra information that they need to access from the various profiling callbacks there.

mono_profiler_install_allocation
Syntax
mono_profiler_install_allocation

mono_profiler_install_appdomain
Syntax
mono_profiler_install_appdomain

mono_profiler_install_assembly
Syntax
mono_profiler_install_assembly

mono_profiler_install_class
Syntax
mono_profiler_install_class

mono_profiler_install_coverage_filter
Syntax
mono_profiler_install_coverage_filter

mono_profiler_install_enter_leave
Syntax
void mono_profiler_install_enter_leave (MonoProfileMethodFunc enter, MonoProfileMethodFunc fleave)

Parameters
enter the routine to be called on each method entry
fleave the routine to be called each time a method returns
Description

Use this routine to install routines that will be called everytime a method enters and leaves. The routines will receive as an argument the MonoMethod representing the method that is entering or leaving.

mono_profiler_install_jit_compile
Syntax
void mono_profiler_install_jit_compile (MonoProfileMethodFunc start, MonoProfileMethodResult end)

Parameters
start the routine to be called when the JIT process starts.
end the routine to be called when the JIT process ends.
Description

Use this routine to install routines that will be called when JIT compilation of a method starts and completes.

mono_profiler_install_module
Syntax
mono_profiler_install_module

mono_profiler_install_thread
Syntax
mono_profiler_install_thread

mono_profiler_install_transition
Syntax
mono_profiler_install_transition

mono_profiler_install_gc
Syntax
mono_profiler_install_gc

mono_profiler_install_statistical
Syntax
mono_profiler_install_statistical

mono_profiler_set_events
Syntax
void mono_profiler_set_events (MonoProfileFlags events)

Parameters
events an ORed set of values made up of MONO_PROFILER_ flags
Description

The events descriped in the events argument is a set of flags that represent which profiling events must be triggered. For example if you have registered a set of methods for tracking JIT compilation start and end with mono_profiler_install_jit_compile, you will want to pass the MONO_PROFILE_JIT_COMPILATION flag to this routine.

You can call mono_profile_set_events more than once and you can do this at runtime to modify which methods are invoked.

mono_profiler_get_events
Syntax
MonoProfileFlags mono_profiler_get_events (void)

Description

Returns a list of active events that will be intercepted.

Coverage

To support profiling modules that need to do code coverage analysis, the following routines is provided: