ftmemsim-valgrind/lackey/docs/lk-manual.xml
Donna Robinson 9888e86b06 Tidying up stuff re generating manpage from *.xml docs
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2005-12-03 23:02:33 +00:00

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<?xml version="1.0"?> <!-- -*- sgml -*- -->
<!DOCTYPE chapter PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.2//EN"
"http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.2/docbookx.dtd">
<chapter id="lk-manual" xreflabel="Lackey">
<title>Lackey: a very simple profiler</title>
<para>To use this tool, you must specify
<computeroutput>--tool=lackey</computeroutput> on the Valgrind
command line.</para>
<sect1 id="lk-manual.overview" xreflabel="Overview">
<title>Overview</title>
<para>Lackey is a simple valgrind tool that does some basic program
measurement. It adds quite a lot of simple instrumentation to the
program's code. It is primarily intended to be of use as an example
tool.</para>
<para>It measures and reports:</para>
<orderedlist>
<listitem>
<para>The number of calls to
<computeroutput>_dl_runtime_resolve()</computeroutput>, the
function in glibc's dynamic linker that resolves function
references to shared objects.</para>
<para>You can change the name of the function with command line
option <computeroutput>--fnname=&lt;name&gt;</computeroutput>.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>The number of conditional branches encountered and the
number and proportion of those taken.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Statistics about the amount of work done during the execution
of the client program:</para>
<orderedlist>
<listitem>
<para>The number of basic blocks entered and completed by the
program. Note that due to optimisations done by the JIT, this
is not really an accurate value.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>The number of guest (x86, amd64, ppc, etc.) instructions and IR
statements executed. IR is Valgrind's RISC-like intermediate
representation via which all instrumentation is done.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Ratios between some of these counts.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>When command line option
<computeroutput>--detailed-counts=yes</computeroutput> is
specified, a table is printed with counts of loads, stores and ALU
operations for various types of operands.</para>
<para>The types are identified by their IR name ("I1" ... "I128",
"F32", "F64", and "V128").</para>
</listitem>
</orderedlist>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>The exit code of the client program.</para>
</listitem>
</orderedlist>
<para>Note that Lackey runs quite slowly, especially when
<computeroutput>--detailed-counts=yes</computeroutput> is specified.
It could be made to run a lot faster by doing a slightly more
sophisticated job of the instrumentation, but that would undermine
its role as a simple example tool. Hence we have chosen not to do
so.</para>
</sect1>
<sect1 id="lk-manual.options" xreflabel="Lackey Options">
<title>Lackey Options</title>
<para>Lackey-specific options are:</para>
<!-- start of xi:include in the manpage -->
<variablelist id="lk.opts.list">
<varlistentry id="opt.fnname" xreflabel="--fnname">
<term>
<option><![CDATA[--fnname=<name> [default: _dl_runtime_resolve()] ]]></option>
</term>
<listitem>
<para>Count calls to &lt;name&gt;.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry id="opt.detailed-counts" xreflabel="--detailed-counts">
<term>
<option><![CDATA[--detailed-counts=<no|yes> [default: no] ]]></option>
</term>
<listitem>
<para>Count loads, stores and alu ops.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
</variablelist>
<!-- end of xi:include in the manpage -->
</sect1>
</chapter>