Re: Guile profiling tools?

Jim Blandy (jimb@red-bean.com)
14 Aug 1998 10:05:55 -0400

> > Are there any guile profiling tools? My guile version of Greg's perl
> > extract-docs takes about 10x as long to extract the docs from the scwm
> > scheme tree than the perl version does.
>
> I'll bet it's the I/O system. Guile's I/O isn't the hottest thing
> ever to hit the streets. *sigh*
>
> Actually, I was hoping that a benchmarking case would present itself
> to guide further work on the I/O system. Now we have one.

Hmm. I think my answer here is the wrong kind of answer. Someone
asks for a profiling system (i.e., a way to collect *real* data), and
I respond with a random guess about why the application in question is
slow.

Guile has no profiling support that I know of. It's a very good idea,
and badly needed. Some people have profiled the Guile interpreter
itself, at the C level. That's helpful if C primitives are consuming
most of your time, but if it says you're spending 90% of your time in
eval, then that's not very helpful.

I'd encourage folks to take a stab at this; post your code to the
list.