Application counters in Linux? (and OSX?)

Question

I\'m trying to figure out if there is a library that gives me something near the equivalent of Windows custom performance counters (described here http://geekswithblogs.net/.NET

Answer 1

In addition to @user964970 comment/solution, I suggest making it OS agnostic.

Use an OS agnostic API, like ACE or BOOST, to create your own library, supplying a named-semaphore write-protected-counter, placed inside a named-shared-memory segment.

This should be your library's API :

long * createCounter(const char * name); // Create a counter
                                         // Will create a named semaphore and a named
                                         // shared memory segment, holding the counter     
                                         // value. Will return pointer to counter
long * getCounter(const char * name); // Get existing counter pointer
                                      // in the calling process' address space
long incCounter(const char * name);   // increment existing counter