Sysprof is a sampling profiler that uses a kernel module to generate stacktraces which are then interpreted by the userspace program "sysprof".

See the Sysprof homepage for more information.

Merge requests and bug reports should be sent to sysprof's repository on GNOME's GitLab instance. For general discussion and questions, you can create a new topic in GNOME's Discourse.

The former mailing list is archived in https://mail.gnome.org/archives/sysprof-list/.

Debugging symbols

The programs and libraries you want to profile should be compiled with -fno-omit-frame-pointer and have debugging symbols available, or you won't get much usable information.

Building Sysprof

You need some packages installed. The package names may vary depending on your distribution, the following command works on Fedora 36:

sudo dnf install gcc gcc-c++ ninja-build gtk4-devel libadwaita-devel

Then do the following:

meson --prefix=/usr build
cd build
ninja
sudo ninja install

WARNING: ninja install will mostly install under the configured install prefix but installs systemd service configuration directly in the system default location /usr/lib/systemd so it won't work without root privileges, even if the install prefix is a user-owned directory.