Home Original page

adding --output-format=json to gprof

Robert Nielsen rnielsen@google.com
Thu Jan 11 02:22:00 GMT 2007 
Greetings,

I've been doing some work groveling the output of gprof and  
generating (graphviz) dot files for visualization of call graphs.   
This experience brings me to this question: Has anyone suggested  
adding an option to gprof so it can generates its output in a (text)  
data-exchange format?  I'm NOT thinking XML, but more like JSON or  
YAML.  These formats are text, human readable, but also (obviously)  
machine readable (and well supported by libraries for all major  
languages).

I'd be happy to do the work to generate JSON (or YAML or ...) output,  
and (if you like) structure things so that other formats might be  
supported at a later date.  So maybe the command line option would be

--output-format={text,json}

Where 'text' is the current (and default) format and 'json' is the  
only other format (initially) supported, but others could be added  
(again at a later date).

Is this the kind of change that (if done "correctly") you'd be  
willing to accept into the main line gprof sources?  If not, what  
might you be willing to accept?

I understand that there is valuable information in the gmon.out file  
that is omitted in the current textual output.  So an alternative  
(machine friendly) format might allow this additional information to  
be included.

Thanks for taking the time to consider this suggestion.

Cheers,
Robert Nielsen

P.S.  I've copied Mel Gorman because he is the author of CodeViz, a  
complementary technology.
More information about the Binutils mailing list