Profiler for Delphi

[FPiette 383]

On 4/24/2020 at 3:09 AM, pyscripter said:

https://github.com/ase379/gpprofile2017

A revamped version of the good old instrumenting profiler by @Primož Gabrijelčič. 

Yes it is. Clearly mentioned by the current maintainer. @Primož Gabrijelčič is a highly skilled Delphi developer, that's why I'm interested in GpProfile2017 and I ask here for feedback from actual user of GpProfile2017.

[FPiette 383]

On 3/14/2021 at 2:14 PM, pyscripter said:

Just in case you have not seen it SamplingProfiler 64 – test version - DelphiTools, 

This stops at Delphi 10.3. I'm using Delphi 11.

[pyscripter 689]

1 hour ago, FPiette said:

I ask here for feedback from actual user of GpProfile2017.

I used it a couple of times and it worked well as far as instrumental profilers go.

[David Heffernan 2345]

It extremely hard to see past vtune

[Anders Melander 1782]

1 minute ago, David Heffernan said:

It extremely hard to see past vtune

I dunno. Don't you find VTune's poor performance to be a problem?

Personally I either need to be really desperate before I resort to VTune or I must have a very good idea about what I'm looking for (like, I need *this* exact function to be faster but I don't exactly know how to make it so).

I have had successes with VTune in cases where I needed to optimize some SSE code but that's about it. On the project I'm working on right now (pure Pascal) it takes VTune over an hour to load the pdb file and so far it hasn't told me anything I didn't already know (from pausing in the debugger).

[David Heffernan 2345]

1 hour ago, Anders Melander said:

Don't you find VTune's poor performance to be a problem?

No, it performs really well for me. Are you using the latest version? It loads quickly for me and does a good job of taking me to the parts of the code where the time is being spent. 

[Anders Melander 1782]

Just now, David Heffernan said:

No, it performs really well for me. Are you using the latest version?

I'm on Windows 7 (on my main dev system) so no 😕

The latest version that works on Windows 7 is VTune Amplifier 2019. I guess I should give it a spin on my laptop (Windows 10 something something) instead before I judge it.

That said, the version of msdia140.dll (which is Microsoft's interface to the pdb file) I'm using is the latest one and as far as I can see msdia140.dll is the bottleneck. Of course it might be that my version of VTune isn't using it correctly.

 

I was just considering writing a replacement for msdia140.dll but it would be great if I don't have to go down that rabbit hole.

[Attila Kovacs 629]

I've downloaded the "latest" VTune Profiler, 2022.1 but it doesn't even touches the pdb file. Luckily I'm not using this app at all.

edit:

forgot to bind... stay tuned

Edited January 16, 2022 by Attila Kovacs

[David Heffernan 2345]

45 minutes ago, Anders Melander said:

I'm on Windows 7 (on my main dev system) so no 😕

The latest version that works on Windows 7 is VTune Amplifier 2019. I guess I should give it a spin on my laptop (Windows 10 something something) instead before I judge it.

That said, the version of msdia140.dll (which is Microsoft's interface to the pdb file) I'm using is the latest one and as far as I can see msdia140.dll is the bottleneck. Of course it might be that my version of VTune isn't using it correctly.

 

I was just considering writing a replacement for msdia140.dll but it would be great if I don't have to go down that rabbit hole.

I'm using the latest vtune and didn't need to do anything with msdia140 and it all works perfectly. 

[Attila Kovacs 629]

@Anders Melander I've installed the VTune Profiler 2022.1.0/621966 and loaded an exe with a 31MB pdb and the hotspot analysis took about a minute.

I think this was way slower back in the days you wrote the converter. Give it a try on an other machine.

[Vincent Parrett 750]

6 hours ago, David Heffernan said:

It extremely hard to see past vtune

I had great results with VTune and map2pdb a while back, however I've since built a new AMD Ryzen based machine and VTune doesn't work on amd 😞 

[David Heffernan 2345]

4 minutes ago, Vincent Parrett said:

I had great results with VTune and map2pdb a while back, however I've since built a new AMD Ryzen based machine and VTune doesn't work on amd 😞 

AMD have their own tool I think. No idea how good it is. 

[Vincent Parrett 750]

4 minutes ago, David Heffernan said:

AMD have their own tool I think. No idea how good it is. 

I only tried it briefly but it barfed on the pdb that map2pdb generates - I haven't had time to get back on it... I solved the perf issue I was looking at with vtune and haven't needed to profile again lately.

[Anders Melander 1782]

37 minutes ago, David Heffernan said:

AMD have their own tool I think. No idea how good it is.

It works fine but it's nowhere near as comprehensive as VTune. One advantage is that it works on both AMD and Intel platforms.

 

32 minutes ago, Vincent Parrett said:

I only tried it briefly but it barfed on the pdb that map2pdb generates

I have AMD uProf version 3.2.449 installed and that works fine on my system.

[Vincent Parrett 750]

2 minutes ago, Anders Melander said:

I have AMD uProf version 3.2.449 installed and that works fine on my system.

I'll have to try it again when time permits - I think the version I tried was older than that (was a while ago now). 

[Stefan Glienke 2002]

On 1/16/2022 at 1:31 PM, FPiette said:

This stops at Delphi 10.3. I'm using Delphi 11.

It does not - it simply does not contain that version in some Combobox.

SamplingProfiler (both 32 and 64) works with the latest Delphi versions just fine.

 

For VTune - I am so happy they finally added Flamegraph to the Hotspot profiler.

Edited January 17, 2022 by Stefan Glienke

[Tom F 83]

For profilers, we use NexsDb's: https://www.nexusdb.com/support/index.php?q=node/27156.  It's a wonderful product and has helped us a lot.

We suggest you avoid SmartBear AQTime.  It felt it was designed for C/C++ and that Delphi was added as an afterthought.  

[Anders Melander 1782]

2 hours ago, Tom F said:

SmartBear AQTime.  It felt it was designed for C/C++ and that Delphi was added as an afterthought.  

I'm pretty sure it was the other way round. AFAIK it's still written in Delphi.

[Tom F 83]

3 hours ago, Anders Melander said:

I'm pretty sure it was the other way round. AFAIK it's still written in Delphi.

Wow. I didn't know that. As I recall at the time, from my experience with the UI, functionality, documentation, and support, I concluded that SmartBear didn't have much commitment to Delphi.  Perhaps I was wrong. Thanks for the info, @Anders Melander

[Vincent Parrett 750]

Smartbear aquired AutomatedQA who developed AQTime. It was written in Delphi back in those days (as were their other tools), the initial version was great, worked really well with delphi and was really useful. Later versions completely changed things to focus more on .net and didn't work well with delphi.. I stopped upgrading. To make matters worse, their licensing mechanism was/is terrible, you will find plenty of people complaining about it on the interwebs. 

[Tom F 83]

Yes, no that you mention it, their licensing scheme was terrible. In all fairness, it was perhaps tougher to do back then than now?

 

And thanks for the confirmation about the history of the product.

[Anders Melander 1782]

https://web.archive.org/web/20000620192211/http://www.totalqa.com/products/qtime.asp

[Vincent Parrett 750]

@Anders Melander I tested amd uprof with map2pdb and can confirm it does work. I had 3.4 something installed, and saw there was an update to 3.5 available.. imho 3.5 is worse than 3.4 - I thought the intel vtune ui was terrible, but uprof is 10 times worse. Upgrading also deletes any old sessions.. which means you have to go through the tedious process of adding the source folders again (there is no option to include subfolders.. grrrr). 

[Willicious 8]

Hi, looking for a profiler in 2023. I'm a small-project user and so don't really want to pay.

 

I use RAD Studio 10.4.2, any suggestions?

[Willicious 8]

Replying again because I forgot to check "notify me of replies", and the site doesn't provide a way to do this after replying