tracing-profile

This library implements subscribers for the tracing crate that facilitate profiling of one-shot program executions. That is, this is not intended for profiling of long-running programs.

tracing-profile depends on tracing-subscriber and implements layers that measure, record, and display timing information in the span graph. The implemented tracing_subscriber::Layer records the time a span took to execute, along with any user supplied metadata and information necessary to construct a span graph from the resulting logs.

Note that if #[tracing::instrument] is used, the skip_all argument is recommended. Omitting this will result in all the function arguments being included as fields.

Usage

The library exposes two layers that output the information in different ways.

Feature flags

• gen_filename enables TraceFilenameBuilder for customizable trace filenames (automatically enabled with perfetto)
• perf_counters enables PrintPerfCountersLayer layer. Currently performance counters work for Linux only.
• perfetto enables Perfetto trace generation with customizable filenames

PrintTreeLayer

The PrintTreeLayer processes the profiling information in the running process and prints the timing information in a human-readable format. The output structures the span graph as a tree.

$ cargo test -- --nocapture
root span [ 112.67µs | 100.00% ]
├── child span1 [ 2.63µs | 2.33% ] { field1 = value1 }
└── child span2 [ 64.29µs | 57.06% ] { field2 = value2 }
   ├── child span3 [ 1.88µs | 1.66% ] { field3 = value3 }
   └── child span4 [ 1.67µs | 1.48% ] { field4 = value4 }

PrintPerfCountersLayer

The PrintPerfCountersLayer at the construction receives a vector of events (perf_event::events::Event) and their names. During execution for each span the number of the given events of each type is summed. The results are printed to the standard output in a form of a table.

perf_counters crate feature enables this functionality.

$ cargo test -- --nocapture
child span4:
    instructions: 44142
    cycles: 34398
child span3:
    instructions: 44132
    cycles: 37674
child span2:
    instructions: 282256
    cycles: 272064
child span1:
    instructions: 49107
    cycles: 112554
root span:
    instructions: 661552
    cycles: 738894

IttApiLayer

The IttApiLayer adds one ittapi::Task for each span at runtime allowing observing spans in Intel VTune profiler. See ITT API documentation for reference.

ittapi crate feature enables this functionality.

Perfetto layer

The Perfetto layer

• for each tracing span span creates a single Perfetto event with the same lifetime
• for each event that has counter property set to true updates the corresponding Perfetto counter value using the value property of the event.

See the documentation to the PerfettoLayer struct for more details.

Perfetto is supported only if the target OS is Linux.

Example Test

fn make_spans() {
    let span = debug_span!("root span");
    let _scope1 = span.enter();

    // child spans 1 and 2 are siblings
    let span2 = debug_span!("child span1", field1 = "value1");
    let scope2 = span2.enter();
    drop(scope2);

    let span3 = debug_span!("child span2", field2 = "value2");
    let _scope3 = span3.enter();

    // child spans 3 and 4 are siblings
    let span = debug_span!("child span3", field3 = "value3");
    let scope = span.enter();
    drop(scope);

    let span = debug_span!("child span4", field4 = "value4");
    let scope = span.enter();
    drop(scope);
}

#[test]
fn all_layers() {
    tracing_subscriber::registry()
        .with(PrintTreeLayer::default())
        .init();
    make_spans();
}

Configuration

Using PrintTreeConfig you can configure color and aggregation/hiding thresholds.

#[test]
fn all_layers() {
    tracing_subscriber::registry()
        .with(PrintTreeLayer::new(PrintTreeConfig {
            attention_above_percent: 25.0,
            relevant_above_percent: 2.5,
            hide_below_percent: 1.0,
            display_unaccounted: false
        }))
        .init();
    make_spans();
}

Authors

tracing-profile is developed and maintained by Irreducible.

License

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2024-2025 Irreducible Inc.

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.