9.8 Performance and Debugging Tools

The developer tools that ship with Panther include an impressive array of debugging and tuning tools. Extensive documention, including examples and demonstrations of using these tools is available at http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Performance/Conceptual/Performance/index.html. The following short list is just to give you an idea of what is available:

gdb

The GNU debugger.

MallocDebug

Analyzes memory usage.

ObjectAlloc

Analyzes both memory allocation and deallocation.

heap

Analyzes memory usage.

leaks

Lists the addresses and sizes of unreferenced malloc buffers.

malloc_history

Lists the malloc allocation history of a given process.

vm_stat

Lists virtual memory statistics.

vmmap

Displays a virtual memory map in a process, including the attributes of memory regions such as starting addresses, sizes, and permissions.

OpenGL Profiler

Profiles OpenGL-based applications.

QuartzDebug

A debugging tool related to the Quartz graphics system.

Sampler

Performs a statistical analysis of where an application spends its time by providing information such as how often allocation routines, system calls, or other functions are called.

Thread Viewer

Profiles individual threads in multithreaded applications.

gprof

Profiles execution of programs by reporting information such as execution times and the number of calls for individual functions.

otool

The otool command-line utility is used to display information associated with object files or libraries. Earlier, we used it with the - L option, which displays the names and version numbers of the shared libraries used by the given object file. For more details see the otool manpage .