[RFC] PyTimechart

Pierre Tardy
2010-05-11T21:10:39Z

Hello,

PyTimechart is another implementation of two very useful tools
available for the linux community:
perf-timechart ( http://blog.fenrus.org/?p=5 ) and bootchart (
http://www.bootchart.org/ )

The two tools share a common idea of making their output to SVG files.
While it is a very good idea for small traces, the generated SVG can
be very heavy, and turns out to be good stress tests for inkscape
developers...

PyTimechart is a tool that parses ftrace text traces, and display them
with the help of a very powerful dynamic plot framework, Chaco (
http://code.enthought.com/chaco/ )
The GUI makes the best it can to ease the browsing of huge traces.

The best is to look at those two 30s screencasts, to figure out how that work.

a look at mplayer startup:
http://tardyp.free.fr/pytimechart/mplayer_start.mp4
a look at ubuntu boot:
http://tardyp.free.fr/pytimechart/boot.mp4

This tool still is in the state of a prototype, I dont know if it
worth to continue to improve it or to implement it ideas in LTTV or
Kernel Shark.
It is actually very useful in its current form (
http://elinux.org/images/0/07/Effect_of_wakeups_on_Moorestown_power.pdf
), and will work without recompiling the kernel of recent distros.

the source code with build instruction is located here
http://gitorious.org/pytimechart

What do you think?

Regards,
--
Pierre