[Rd] profiling C code

[Simon Urbanek]

On Feb 20, 2006, at 7:18 PM, Ross Boylan wrote:

> Does anyone have any advice about profiling C/C++ code in a package  
> under R?  Does R need to be built specially for this to work?
>
> The FAQ has some entries about profiling but they cover R level  
> profiling; I'm try to get at the C++ code I've written that is  
> called from R.
>
> Primary target is Mac OS X.
>

If you have an OS X box to work on, then you have a handful of really  
excellent tools. Have a look at Shark from the CHUD tools (in / 
Developer/Applications/Performance Tools) Although it's sampling- 
based (.i.e. no need to gprof - just run sample running R), it is  
remarkably accurate and has ton of features for what they call 'data  
mining' of the profile data - including drill-down to source code and  
even assembly level. You can read a bit at
http://developer.apple.com/tools/sharkoptimize.html
It proves to be really useful and very flexible.

Cheers,
Simon