valgrind - How use callgrind to profiling only a certain period of program execution?

Question

I want to use valgrind to do some profiling, since it does not need re-build the program. (the program I want to profile is already build with “-g")

But valgrind(callgrind) is quite slow ... so here's what I to do:

1. start the server ( I want to profile that server)
2. kind of attach to that server
3. before I do some operation on server, start collect profile data
4. after the operation is done, end collecting profile data
5. analyze the profiling data.

I can do this kind of thing using sun studio on Solaris. (using dbx ). I just want to know is it possible to do the same thing using valgrind(callgrind)?

Thanks

Answer 1

You should look at callgrind documentation, and read about callgrind_control.

1. Launch your app : valgrind --tool=callgrind --instr-atstart=no your_server.x
2. See 1.
3. start collect profile data: callgrind_control -i on
4. end collect profile data: callgrind_control -i off
5. Analyze data with kcachegrind or callgrind_annotate/cg_annotate