JetBrains Rider 2018.3 Help

Profiling Applications

Regardless of what application type you are going to profile, the workflow is always the same and consists of:

  1. Configuring a profiling session

  2. Running the session and getting snapshots

  3. Analyzing the collected snapshots

Step 1. Configuring a profiling session

Profiling configurations in Rider

Before starting a profiling session, you must select a profiling configuration:

  • The profiling configuration specifies which profiling type will be used and whether child processes of a main profiled process (a profiling target) must be profiled.

  • The profiling target is always an executable* which is specified in the currently selected run configuration .

  • Currently, you are able to profile the following run configuration types:

    If you select a run configuration of some other type, this will disable the profiling controls on the toolbar.

To select a profiling configuration

To create a profiling configuration

  1. In the toolbar, in the list of profiling configurations, select Edit Configurations….

  2. In the opened Profiling Configurations window, click Add profiling configuration to add a new profiling configuration.

  3. Specify configuration Name and other profiling options:

    • Profiling type

      Profiling Method

      Profiling Type

      Description

      Use Case

      Performance Profiling
      Detailed timing information about function calls.

      Sampling

      Accurate time measurement, number of calls is not measured.

      Recommended for most cases. Ideal when you look for performance issues in your app for the first time.

      Tracing

      Accurate calls number measurement, time measurement may be inaccurate due to profiling overhead.

      When sampling data is not enough. For example, for analyzing algorithm complexity (when info about number of calls is more valuable than call time values).

      Line-by-line

      Each line of code is measured, call time values are inaccurate due to huge profiler overhead.

      For advanced use cases only. For example, when you already know what function causes issues and want to analyze each line of it.

      Timeline Profiling
      Detailed temporal data about application threads and events.

      Timeline

      Collects temporal data about thread states, application events, and other multi-threading data. Based on Event Tracing for Windows (ETW).

      Recommended for most cases. Especially, for analyzing multithreaded apps. Use it, for example, to determine the cause of UI freezes, excessive garbage collections, uneven workload distribution, insufficient I/O, and so on.

    • Profile child processes: If selected, dotTrace will profile not only the main app process but the processes it runs as well.

Step 2. Running the session and getting snapshots

To start a session and get snapshots

  1. On the toolbar, select the run configuration you want to profile.

  2. Either select Run | Profile 'run_config_name' Using 'profiling_config_name' or click the corresponding button on the toolbar.

    Start profiling session

    Once the profiling is started, you will see the Performance Profiler tool window opened on the Profiling tab with the profiling controller inside.

  3. If you disabled Record profiling data from start in the profiling configuration, click Start Recording Start Recording to start recording profiling data.
    Basically, now all you need is reproduce the performance issue you are looking for or, if you just evaluate the overall app performance, go through the desired usage scenarios in your application.

  4. Click Get Performance Snapshot Rider Get Snapshot. The collected snapshot will be added to the list of snapshots inside the Performance Profiler window. To start collecting profiling data again, click Start Recording Start Recording one more time.

  5. After you collect a snapshot(s), you can finish the profiling session. Normally, you do it either by closing the profiled application or by detaching the profiler via the Detach profiler Detach button ( Kill processes Kill forcibly terminates the profiled app and the session, so, use it only in emergency cases).

Step 3. Analyzing collected snapshots

For more details on how to analyze performance snapshots, please refer to Analyzing Profiling Results.

To analyze a snapshot

  1. On the All Snapshots tab of the Performance Profiler tool window, select the snapshot you want to analyze.

  2. Analyze the collected data using one of the views:

    • Call Tree: a "classic" call tree that shows you all method calls in all threads. Each top-level node represents a top-level function which was executed by a certain thread. Use this view to quickly get down to actual application activity. Learn more

    • Top Methods: the best place to start when analyzing application performance. It is a simple plain list of methods with the highest execution time. Note that you can reduce the system functions "noise" by excluding them from the list using the Hide system functions toggle: if enabled, method's execution time is calculated as a sum of method's own time and the time of all child system methods (down to the next user method in the stack). Learn more

  3. Once the suspicious method is found, press F4 or select Jump to Source from the context menu. Rider will navigate you right to the method's source code.

Last modified: 25 April 2019