Tag Archives: symbols

WPA Symbol Loading is Much Faster, but Broken for Chrome

Posted on November 7, 2016 by brucedawson

There’s good news, and there’s bad news. The good news is that the latest Windows Performance Analyzer (WPA), the visualization tool for ETW (Event Tracing for Windows) traces, can now load symbols faster than ever before – it’s multi-threaded, and … Continue reading →

Posted in uiforetw | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Slow Symbol Loading in Microsoft’s Profiler, Take Two

Posted on November 4, 2014 by brucedawson

When I run into a problematically slow program I immediately reach for a profiler so that I can understand the problem and either fix it or work around it. This guidance applies even when the slow program is a profiler. … Continue reading →

Posted in Investigative Reporting, xperf | Tagged , , , , | 20 Comments

Symbols on Linux update: Fedora Fixes

Posted on March 5, 2013 by brucedawson

I wrote last month about the challenges of obtaining Linux symbols based on a build ID. I’m now pleased to say that getting Linux symbols based on a build ID is trivial on both Ubuntu and Fedora – things are … Continue reading →

Posted in Linux, Symbols | Tagged , , , , , , | 12 Comments

Visual Studio Single Step Performance Fixes

Posted on March 3, 2013 by brucedawson

Single-stepping through code in Visual Studio is usually fast, but sometimes it is torturously painfully slow. When I ran into this recently – twice – I used xperf to find the sources of the slowdowns, and then work around them. … Continue reading →

Posted in Investigative Reporting, Visual Studio, xperf | Tagged , , , , , | 15 Comments

Symbols on Linux Part Three: Linux versus Windows

Posted on February 20, 2013 by brucedawson

After many years programming solely on Windows I have recently started working on Linux. This is the third post in a series of tutorials that will share what I have learned about handling Linux symbols. This third post explains how … Continue reading →

Posted in Linux, Symbols | Tagged , , , | 35 Comments

Symbols on Linux Part Two: Symbols for Other Versions

Posted on January 19, 2013 by brucedawson

After many years programming solely on Windows I have recently started working on Linux – Ubuntu to be precise. This is the second post in a series of tutorials that will share what I have learned about handling Linux symbols. … Continue reading →

Posted in Linux, Symbols | Tagged , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

Symbols on Linux Part One: g++ Library Symbols

Posted on January 8, 2013 by brucedawson

After many years programming solely on Windows I have recently started working on Linux – Ubuntu to be precise. One of the things that I have had to learn is the very different ways in which Linux developers deal with … Continue reading →

Posted in Linux, Programming, Symbols | Tagged , , , , , | 18 Comments

Xperf Symbol Loading Pitfalls

Posted on October 4, 2012 by brucedawson

Analyzing xperf traces is virtually impossible if you don’t have symbols. Unfortunately the xperf toolkit makes it easy to end up with symbols that takes hours to load, or don’t load at all. Update, July 2020: this blog post is … Continue reading →

Posted in Symbols, xperf | Tagged , , , , | 24 Comments