An IronPython Profiler

By Michael Foord -
Curt Hagenlocher (core IronPython developer) has a blog entry outlining a new profiling tool for IronPython which is included in IronPython 2.6 Alpha 1. With Harry Pierson's debugger we're almost spoiled for tools now!
I was recently working on improving the performance of a Python-based application and thought it would be useful to profile my code. My intuition was telling me that the problem was in a certain area of the code, but I wanted hard numbers to back up this intuition before I went to the trouble of doing a rewrite. Unfortunately, neither the CLR Profiler nor the profiling support in Visual Studio are very effective when used with IronPython, as they weren’t really created for environments where code is dynamically compiled at runtime.

But Tomáš had written a profiler for IronRuby nearly half a year ago, so I thought I’d port this to IronPython, where it’s now experimentally available in IronPython 2.6 Alpha 1.

The way Tomáš’ profiler works is pretty straightforward. At the start of every method we compile, a snapshot is taken of the current time. Another is taken at the end of the method and the difference is stored for later retrieval. The only tricky thing about it is trying to update the statistics in a manner that’s both thread-safe and has minimal effect on performance.

I’ve modified it a bit from the original, though, and added some fun features. In particular, it now tracks the number of calls made to each method and also keeps separate counters for the amount of time spent exclusively inside the method versus the duration spent inclusively in both this method and in any methods it calls.

Additionally, I’ve added counters to track calls made from Python code into statically-compiled .NET code.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Extending Abobe Flash Player and AIR with Python and Ruby

By Michael Foord -
An intriguing blog entry about an Adobe experimental project. It is a C/C++ cross- compiler for the flash player and AIR. This means that you can (will be able to?) cross-compile the Python / Ruby/ lots of other language runtimes and then run them in Flash. The blog entry contrasts this approach to the DLR which requires the re-implementation of dynamic languages - hence IronPython and IronRuby. The project is already beyond proof-of concept, they even have Quake III cross-compiled and running in Flash. Extending Adobe Flash Player and AIR with C/C++ Cross-Compiler Quake 3 has already been ported to managed code , but this is even more impressive. Whether the Python interpreter can be cross-compiled to run on top of another runtime (with completely different basic types), without changing the language semantics at all, has yet to be proved - but it is a very interesting project. (It also means that Python/Ruby will possibly be enabled only by additional optional downloads - but don'
Read more

Should Python Projects Support IronPython and Jython?

By Michael Foord -
The maintainers of the Spring Framework for Python ( Spring Python ) wonder how much of a priority it is to have compatibility with platforms other than CPython. In other words, should they support IronPython and Jython - and if so what should they do about their C extension dependencies? This question sparks a good discussion and is relevant to many other Python projects and applications: Need for supporting IronPython, Jython? " One of the topics on my mind recently, as we consider refactoring the core container, is how we ensure that when we introduce internal dependencies, such as possibly the Amara libraries for XML processing, what secondary constraints we might be introducing. " " For example, Amara represents a very pythonic and therefore simple to read and use approach to developing XML processing, such as our very own XML application configuration parsers. So from that perspective, things are very attractive. But then you ask the question, "can I run this
Read more

Further Adventures of the Debugger

By Michael Foord -
Harry Pierson (Microsoft IronPython PM) has been experimenting with writing an IronPython debugger ( ipydbg ) on top of the .NET MDbg APIs. When we last left him , he had implemented Just My Code (JMC) support allowing you to step into IronPython code. Since then he has made a lot of progress including a colourful REPL (interactive console) and solving some difficult problems around getting to real values behind boxed IronPython variables (needed for showing local variables). He has blogged extensively on what he has been up to (more recent posts last): Showing Source Code Colorful Console IronPython ConsoleColorMgr (the colorful console code pulled out into a separate IronPython module) A Little Hack...err...Cleanup Getting Local Variables Displaying Values Command Routing Getting Arguments REPL Console A lot of functionality is now present. In the command routing entry Harry outlines the seven commands supported by the debugger so far: Continue, Quit, Show Stack Trace, Show Locals,
Read more