How do you profile your code?

Question

I hope not everyone is using Rational Purify.

So what do you do when you want to measure:

• time taken by a function
• peak memory usage

Answer 1

Windows (.NET and Native Exes): AQTime is a great tool for the money. Standalone or as a Visual Studio plugin.

Java: I'm a fan of JProfiler. Again, can run standalone or as an Eclipse (or various other IDEs) plugin.

I believe both have trial versions.

Answer 2

The Google Perftools are extremely useful in this regard.

Answer 3

You probably want different tools for performance profiling and code coverage.

For profiling I prefer Shark on MacOSX. It is free from Apple and very good. If your app is vanilla C you should be able to use it, if you can get hold of a Mac.

For profiling on Windows you can use LTProf. Cheap, but not great: http://successfulsoftware.net/2007/12/18/optimising-your-application/

(I think Microsoft are really shooting themself in the foot by not providing a decent profiler with the cheaper versions of Visual Studio.)

For coverage I prefer Coverage Validator on Windows: http://successfulsoftware.net/2008/03/10/coverage-validator/ It updates the coverage in real time.