sysprof/NEWS

Overview of changes in Sysprof 48.0
===================================

 * Translation updates

Overview of changes in Sysprof 48.rc
====================================

 * Fix drawing of Y-reversed data point markers
 * Make greeter save environment variables to state file for reuse
 * Use D-Bus power profiles bus name rather than legacy D-Bus bus name
 * Translation updates

Overview of changes in Sysprof 48.beta
======================================

 * Ensure local dbus-monitor is reaped after capturing
 * Modernization for various GTK deprecations
 * Add new symbolizer for debuginfod which is enabled by default
 * Many performance improvements for capture loading
 * Support for unwinding without frame-pointers on distributions
   lacking -fno-omit-frame-pointer at the toolchain level. This
   uses a new "sysprof-live-unwinder" elevated helper process
   which takes data from perf and unwinds the stack as soon as
   it can without capturing the perf data to disk.
   Thank you to Red Hat and the tools team for enabling this
   work for RHEL.
 * The greeter now persists your settings and restores them the
   next time you run Sysprof.
 * Various graph drawing improvements.
 * Fixes for time display in various formats.
 * Translation updates.

Overview of changes in Sysprof 47.0
===================================

 * Speed up capture loading using gtk_tim_sort().
 * Speed up capture loading using a private bump allocator
   for callgraph nodes.
 * Use AdwAboutDialog.
 * Add GIO and Mutter to graphics section.
 * Fix use of tracefd on some child processes.
 * Fix some use of blocking FDs.
 * Collapse some recursive functions in callgraphs.
 * Improve styling of waterfall labels.
 * Allow polkit to be optional in some situations.
 * Translation updates.

Overview of changes in Sysprof 47.beta
======================================

Changes in this release:

 * Recording window can now be dragged by clicking
   anywhere but the stop button.
 * Various coverity warning fixes.
 * Translation updates.

Overview of changes in Sysprof 47.alpha
=======================================

Changes in this release:

 * Style improvements to match libadwaita 1.6 and libpanel 1.7.
 * Various chart drawing fixes.
 * Build fixes.
 * Translation updates

Overview of changes in Sysprof 46.0
===================================

Changes since 46.rc

 * Flamegraph and callgraph colorization improvements
 * Fix graphics page for GTK counters
 * Fix missing summary icon
 * Translation updates

Overview of changes in Sysprof 46.rc
====================================

Changes since 46.beta

 * Avoid C99 restrict keyword when using C++
 * Add --monitor-bus option to sysprof-cli to record bus address
 * Fix compiler warning on integer comparison

Overview of changes in Sysprof 46.beta
======================================

Changes since 45

 * Rust and C++ demangler improvements
 * Protection against extremely large mark collections
 * Various fixes for parsing certain load bearing /proc files
 * Improved stack trace categorization
 * Fix use of pointer cursor
 * Translation updates

Overview of changes in Sysprof 45.0
===================================

Changes since 45.rc:

 * Ignore swapper/# scheduler details to better show activity
 * Update some subsystem name extraction
 * Translation updates

Overview of changes in Sysprof 45.rc
====================================

Changes since 45.beta:

 * A Rust demangler is provided which can demangle some newer style
   Rust symbols.
 * The C++ and Rust legacy demanger has improved to handle some
   scenarios where <> and :: should be used.
 * The D-Bus section has gained support for search filtering.
 * A busy indicator is now show when callgraphs are being generated or
   updated to reflect changing view options.
 * Improvements to sysprof-cli and sysprof-agent to support recent
   capture features.
 * sysprof-cli can now specify capture buffer size in number of pages
   to help in situations where you want to avoid disk spillage.
 * Zoom controls now stay sticky to the left.
 * SysprofCollector will now try much harder for the peer to process
   the mmap ring buffer before bailing so that the leak collector is
   less likely to drop records.
 * Sysprof now uses gtktimsort to sort records for a significant speed
   improvement when loading large captures.
 * Window titles now include documen title.
 * Reduction in number of samples to normalize for various charts which
   results in faster loading times. You can continue to zoom in to get
   better details.
 * A new scheduler details instrument is provided, which uses tracepoints
   to track when processes were running and on what CPU.
 * A new flamegraph is added for viewing profiling results. It is powered
   by the same callgraph seen in the callgraph view, which means changes to
   the callgraph can influence the flamegraph. Colorization is provided
   by stack categorization in callgraphs.
 * Categorization of Kernel symbols has been fixed.
 * Callgraphs are now sorted incrementally to help keep the UI responsive
   while loading the document.
 * Accounting of weights for callgraphs has been improved to avoid double
   counting summary values when recursion is used.
 * A fix for a crash when pivoting to a new root in the callgraph.
 * A new option to merge similar processes when generating callgraphs.
 * A new option to filter out kernel processes has been added. This feature
   is quite rudimentary and involves commandline sniffing. Improvements
   are requested by those seeking more comprehensive filtering.
 * Improvements to locating and symbolizing Flatpak processes.
 * The files section has gained search filter support.

Happy Hacking!

Overview of changes in Sysprof 45.beta
=======================================

Sysprof has largely been redesigned and rewriten from the ground up this cycle
to provide better GTK 4 integration and more advanced features.

libsysprof-capture
------------------

This library is our static library used by many applications and libraries to
augment capture collection. It is still installed as libsysprof-capture-4.a
as a static library for consumers. The ABI is the same, however some new data
types have been added.

libsysprof
----------

This library has been rewritten around a new document model for captures.
Instead of using SysprofCaptureReader (a buffered capture reader) the
SysprofDocument object exposes a GListModel of a mmap()'d capture file.

This has allowed for many new indexing performance improvements as well
as simpler data-binding in the user interface.

You can read more about this at
https://blogs.gnome.org/chergert/2023/07/18/glistmodel-as-a-data-format/

Additionally, a new SysprofProfiler API has been added. It has been much
simplified and allows for easier implementation of instruments in a race
free manner.

The library heavily builds upon libdex for Futures which I created this past
window to simplify features in GNOME Builder.

sysprof-cli and sysprof-agent
-----------------------------

These tools both provide similar features albeit from a different standpoint.
They have both been updated to use the new profiler interface in libsysprof.

sysprofd
--------

Very minimal changes have been made to sysprofd to help ensure that the
application and libraries can still work on systems with an older sysprofd
installed on the host.

sysprof
-------

The application has been completely redesigned and is now window focused
rather than tabs. The constraint of tabs was becoming too cumbersome to
maintain so as the author, I felt this was the right move.

Howto and More
--------------

I wrote a series of blog posts on how to use Sysprof which you might
find useful.

https://blogs.gnome.org/chergert/2023/07/28/how-to-use-sysprof-again/
https://blogs.gnome.org/chergert/2023/08/04/more-sysprofing/

You can see an overview of the new features here:

https://blogs.gnome.org/chergert/2023/07/27/sysprof-45/


Overview of changes in Sysprof 3.48.0
=====================================

 * Various a11y improvements
 * Some widgets ported to GtkColumnView
 * Sysprof-dump can now symbolicate instruction pointers
 * Visualizer group fixes for missing rows
 * Fixes for inheriting stdin when spawning processes
 * Build system fixes to improve use as a meson subproject
 * Additional shortcuts added to shortcut overlay
 * LD_PRELOAD syntax fixes
 * Translation updates

Overview of changes in Sysprof 3.46.0
=====================================

 * sysprof-cli is now statically linked
 * sysprof-agent now has a --decode option to decode symbols at the end
   of a capture, similar to what sysprof-cli can do.
 * A crash in the Elf symbol resolver has been fixed.
 * Translation updates

Overview of changes in Sysprof 3.45.1
=====================================

This release of Sysprof is a development release and is not intended for
end users.

 * Addition of sysprof-agent to aid in cross-container profiling and
   instrumentation. (Use -Dagent=(true|false) to control
 * Additional porting to libadwaita
 * Remove unused settings schemas
 * Nightly Flatpak builds now use org.gnome.Sysprof.Devel as the
   application-id
 * The application now uses org.gnome.Sysprof as the application-id
   instead of org.gnome.Sysprof3.
 * Icon updates
 * Translation updates

Overview of changes in Sysprof 3.45.0
=====================================

This release of Sysprof is a development release and is not intended for
end users.

 * Initial port to GTK 4
 * A number of build configuration options where simplified and will need
   changing by distributions to match the new, more consistent, naming.
 * Libadwaita has been added as a dependency
 * The profiler assistant has received styling changes
 * libsysprof-ui had it's ABI bumped to libsysprof-ui-5 which targets GTK 4.

Overview of changes in Sysprof 3.44.0
=====================================

 * Translation updates

Overview of changes in Sysprof 3.43.90
======================================

 * Require libunwind unless disabled manually to help ensure
   distributions are doing the right thing.
 * Add allocation leaks section to memprof.
 * Fix preloading of speedtrack
 * Fix capture of mapped path names with spaces
 * Translation updates

Overview of changes in Sysprof 3.42.1
=====================================

 * Build fixes for close()/lseek() usage
 * Show recording time in local time instead of UTC
 * Improve resolving of symbols in presence of toolbox, flatpak,
   and btrfs
 * Fix checking of paranoid state in Linux kernel
 * Updated translations

Overview of changes in Sysprof 3.42.0
=====================================

 * Much work has been done to improve path resolution of maps found within
   containers such as podman, toolbox, and flatpak.

Overview of changes in Sysprof 3.40.1
=====================================

 * Fix build system issue which caused symbols from libsysprof-capture.a to leak
   into the ABI of libraries consuming it. This was due to inheritance of GNU
   default symbol visibility. A recompilation of those libraries is necessary.

Overview of changes in Sysprof 3.40.0
=====================================

 * Improve symbol resolving on OSTree-based systems
 * Translation updates

Overview of changes in Sysprof 3.39.94
======================================

 * Fix some licenses in headers.
 * Add API to sysprofd/libsysprof to tweak.
   /proc/sys/kernel/perf_event_paranoid to improve capture quality.
   Tooling will now always try to change this value while profiling
   the system and ignore upon failure.
 * ftruncate() before overwriting proc files.
 * GTK aid has been removed as it is always enabled through the
   use of control-fd now.
 * Add a new Overlay capture frame type for mapping overlays between
   the host and the process filesystem namespace.
 * Use overlays to map podman containers to overlay directories
 * Use overlays to map flatpak containers to overlay directories for
   both /app and /usr.

Overview of changes in Sysprof 3.39.92
======================================

 * Use pic when compiling static libsysprof-capture
 * Some changes to podman symbol decoding
 * Handle NULL readers gracefully from capture cursors
 * Use g_memdup2()
 * UI tweaks
 * Translation updates

Overview of changes in Sysprof 3.39.90
======================================

 * Build fixes for macOS
 * polkit is optional (again) for sysprof-cli
 * Various fixes in kernel symbol resolving
 * Fix build when stack-protector is not used
 * Support elfparser on some interesting platforms
 * Translation updates

Overview of changes in Sysprof 3.38.1
=====================================

 * Support for translating paths to binary symbols has been improved when using
   Btrfs subvolumes.
 * Build system fixes
 * Fixes for sysprof_capture_reader_list_files() to match expectations
 * Load proper speedtrack library in LD_PRELOAD
 * Fixes when generating pkg-config files
 * Fixes when using musl libc
 * Translation updates

Overview of changes in Sysprof 3.38.0
=====================================

 * Translation updates

Overview of changes in Sysprof 3.37.92
======================================

 * Build system fixes
 * Fix incorrect warnings
 * Add various missing capture APIs for GTK
 * Be more careful about when polkit is queried
 * Translation updates

Overview of changes in Sysprof 3.37.90
======================================

 * Various build fixes
 * Translation updates

Overview of changes in Sysprof 3.37.2
=====================================

 * sysprof-capture no longer requires GLib and therefore the ABI has
   been bumped to 4. This allowed Sysprof to be used form GLib without
   circular dependencies
 * Various UI tweaks
 * Support for use as a subproject

Overview of changes in Sysprof 3.36.0
=====================================

 * Preload library has been moved to $libdir from $libexecdir
 * Build system improvements
 * Fix whole-system capture setting when using "Record Again" feature
 * New SysprofCollector interfaces for samples, marks, and logs to
   sit alongside allocations
 * Translation updates

Overview of changes in Sysprof 3.35.92
======================================

 * A new profiler for tracking memory allocations within processes
   that are spawned by Sysprof. Select "Track Allocations" to use
   an LD_PRELOAD module which monitors allocations within the target
   process. A callgraph is provided with allocations and their stack
   traces. This brings the main features of the venerable "Memprof"
   into Sysprof.
 * Port Sysprof to work on RHEL 7
 * Improvements to marks and counters displays
 * A new data frame in libsysprof-capture for memory allocations
   with stack traces.
 * sysprof-cli --merge can now be used to merge multiple syscap
   files together.
 * sysprof <program-path> can now be used to open Sysprof directly
   to a program to execute.
 * Sysprof now builds with additional security protections and
   optimization flags such as -Bsymbolic, -Wl,-z,defs, -Wl,-z,now,
   and -Wl,-z,relro.
 * Fixes for macOS
 * The ELF symbol resolver is faster
 * sysprof-cli now properly adds supplemental information to the
   capture file such as decoded symbols. This makes sharing syscap
   files across machines easier and more reliable.
 * A new mmap()'d ring buffer can be shared between processes for
   faster data transfer to sysprof. We expect more features around
   this SysprofCollector interface in future releases.
 * A new set if icons has been provided for the collectors
 * Translation updates

Overview of changes in Sysprof 3.35.2
=====================================

 * Build and test fixes
 * Track changes to gdbus-codegen
 * Include additional pkg-config variable for access to D-Bus data
 * Translation updates

Overview of changes in Sysprof 3.34.1
=====================================

 * Process search fixes

Overview of changes in Sysprof 3.34.0
=====================================

 * Help fixes
 * Build and test fixes
 * Translation updates

Overview of changes in Sysprof 3.33.92
======================================

 • Check for GLib 2.61.3 or newer for features used when removing deprecated
   API usage from GLib.
 • Require meson 0.50
 • Translation updates

Overview of changes in Sysprof 3.33.90
======================================

 • Tweak CSS styling a bit
 • Hide RAPL rows if no counters were discovered
 • Fix --no-battery in sysprof-cli
 • Improve parsing of /proc/mounts and /proc/pid/mountinfo
 • Improve support for using libsysprof from Flatpak
 • Symbol directories are removed from public ABI and consumers should
   now add directories to SysprofElfSymbolResolver directly

Overview of changes in Sysprof 3.33.4
=====================================

 • Build system fixes and improved backports
 • New network, disk, battery, and energy sources
 • Additional options for sysprof-cli including "syprof-cli -- command"
   support.
 • i18n is now properly initialized at startup
 • Improved styling
 • A new "duplex" graph type for read/write type visuals

Overview of changes in Sysprof 3.33.3
=====================================

This release of Sysprof contains the largest amount of work since we revived
the project a few years ago. We have revamped and minimized the ABI of
libsysprof-ui considerably. As port of the ABI update, symbols have been
changed from Sp to Sysprof to reduce chances of collisions.

With these changes comes a soname bump and upgrade of the D-Bus API provided
by the package. Some work has been taken to implement older versions of the
sysprofd API so that older clients may continue to work.

 • Various build system improvements
 • A new libsysprof-capture-3.a capture library has been provided to allow
   application developers to capture data and merge into the profiler stream.
 • The recording and viewing API has been redesigned and improved.
 • Sysprof has been backported to support GTK 3.22 and GLib 2.50.
 • Support for passing file-descriptors has been added to allow profiling
   integration with GNOME Shell, GJS, and GTK profilers.
 • New API to allow integration with external tooling that spawns applications
   is provided so that environment and arguments may be modified.
 • A new re-record feature has been added.
 • The capture format can now store log messages, metadata, and file content.
 • A new org.gnome.Sysprof3 daemon has been added, which is written using
   GDBus instead of libsystemd. This may improve portability to some
   distributions.
 • The portability of Sysprof to non-Linux systems has been improved, however
   many recording features are still not available on non-Linux platforms.
 • A new org.gnome.Sysprof3.Profiler XML D-Bus interface is provided for
   tooling that wants to export Sysprof content via D-Bus.
 • Various new capture sources have been provided.
 • sysprofd also implements a compat org.gnome.Sysprof2 D-Bus end-point
   for older clients.
 • Translation updates

Happy Profiling,

-- Christian