www.delorie.com/gnu/docs/binutils/gprof_26.html

search

	Buy GNU books!

GNU gprof

9.2 Profiling Data File Format

The old BSD-derived file format used for profile data does not contain a magic cookie that allows to check whether a data file really is a gprof file. Furthermore, it does not provide a version number, thus rendering changes to the file format almost impossible. GNU gprof uses a new file format that provides these features. For backward compatibility, GNU gprof continues to support the old BSD-derived format, but not all features are supported with it. For example, basic-block execution counts cannot be accommodated by the old file format.

The new file format is defined in header file `gmon_out.h'. It consists of a header containing the magic cookie and a version number, as well as some spare bytes available for future extensions. All data in a profile data file is in the native format of the target for which the profile was collected. GNU gprof adapts automatically to the byte-order in use.

In the new file format, the header is followed by a sequence of records. Currently, there are three different record types: histogram records, call-graph arc records, and basic-block execution count records. Each file can contain any number of each record type. When reading a file, GNU gprof will ensure records of the same type are compatible with each other and compute the union of all records. For example, for basic-block execution counts, the union is simply the sum of all execution counts for each basic-block.