Gprof: Difference between revisions

To get useful information from [https://sourceware.org/binutils/docs/gprof/ Gprof] , you first need to compile your code with debugging information enabled. With the GNU compilers, you do so by adding a "-pg" option on compilation. This option tells the compiler to generate extra code to write profile information suitable for the analysis. If it is not in your compiler options no call-graph data will be gathered and if you run gprof hopping to get the profiling you may get the following error:

Once your code is compiled with the proper options, you execute it:

You execute your code the same way as you would do it without Gprof profiling. In fact, the execution line does not change.

Once the binary is executed, a new file 'gmon.out' is generated in the current working directory.

Note that if your code changes current directory, then gmon.out will be created in the new working directory. Furthermore, your program should have sufficient permissions for gmon.out to be generated.

In this step the Gprof tool is executed again with the binary name and the above mentioned ‘gmon.out’ as argument. This should create an analysis file with all the desired profiling information.