R devel - Feb 2005 - Profiling C functions called from R.

Hi,

I am working on an R package which includes some C routines. I would 
like to profile the C routines (built with GCC under Debian Linux). I 
tried running R with

LD_PROFILE=/path/to/C/library.so R

and executing functions that would invoke the code therein. The code 
takes about twice as long to run with LD_PROFILE set than without, so I 
am guessing that profiling is taking place. However, gmon.out is not 
generated (or at least I can't find it anywhere on the filesystem).

Has anyone been able to profile shared libraries built for R in Linux?

                Thank you in advance,
                Pavel Krivitsky

On Fri, 25 Feb 2005, Pavel N. Krivitsky wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am working on an R package which includes some C routines. I would like
to
> profile the C routines (built with GCC under Debian Linux). I tried running
R
> with
>
> LD_PROFILE=/path/to/C/library.so R
>
> and executing functions that would invoke the code therein. The code takes 
> about twice as long to run with LD_PROFILE set than without, so I am
guessing
> that profiling is taking place. However, gmon.out is not generated (or at 
> least I can't find it anywhere on the filesystem).
>
> Has anyone been able to profile shared libraries built for R in Linux?
How exactly are you trying to do this?  Is R built to support profiling 
(see the R-admin manual)?  Are you using gprof or sprof?

I would not expect that setting to produce a gmon.out (I think you have 
confused gprof and sprof).   At least on Solaris, with this route you need 
not to have used -pg and you get a file like /var/tmp/foo.so.profile.
Linux's documentation is far, far sketchier.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
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