Re: [boost] Profiling template instantiations (Steven Watanabe)

Subject: Re: [boost] Profiling template instantiations (Steven Watanabe)
From: Joel de Guzman (joel_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-11-11 21:23:33

Hartmut Kaiser wrote:
> Zoltan,
> 
>> We have created a framework for debugging/profiling template
>> metaprograms in 2006. It might give you a few tips.
>>
>> It works based on the same idea you have.
>> We instrument all template codes, both at the begining
>> and at the end of each template we insert a special piece
>> of code emitting warning messages of a well-defined form.
>>
>> Before instrumentation we create an XML file to remember
>> the template positions in the source file. When we parse
>> the warning, using this information we can reconstruct
>> the instantiation stack knowing the original line numbers,
>> identifiers, etc.. At the end we produce another XML for
>> possible front-ends.
>>
>> The framework uses boost::spirit and boost::wave. We have also
>> implemented and tested a visual studio plug-in.
>>
>> An overview of the whole idea: http://gsd.web.elte.hu/templight/
>> There is also a GPCE article about the framework, you can find it here:
>> http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1173746&coll=portal&dl=ACM&CFID=4
>> 773116&CFTOKEN=12094611
>> or here: http://gsd.web.elte.hu/contents/articles/gpce06.pdf
>>
>> You can download both the VS binaries and the source from:
>> http://people.inf.elte.hu/pocok
>>
>> Please feel free to use the code or any of the ideas.
>> For technical question you can find Jozsef: jmihalicza_at_[hidden]
>> or me.
> 
> I've tried to use this last year and found it to work reasonably well for
> small/medium number of templates. The problem I encountered was that for
> real world projects (i.e. trying to analyze some of the Spirit code) the
> generated XML files where too huge to handle (at least for your VS plugin).
> I didn't look further into extracting only certain parts out of the XML,
> though. 
> 
> Templight is definitely a promising first step towards better meta-template
> debugging tools! I'ld love to see this to be brought forward in the future.

Same here! I'd love to have it work on template heavy code like
Spirit itself.

Regards,
-- 
Joel de Guzman
http://www.boostpro.com
http://spirit.sf.net