Scotty interviews Colin Wheeler (The Cocoa Samurai) on debugging with DTrace

Episode Information

• Running Time: 1 hr 07 mins 02 secs
• Download Size: 53MB

Download/Listen
Episode 38 (Enhanced)

Show Notes

Show Content

• What is DTrace?
• Uses
•     What can you do with DTrace?
•         Mac OS X Tracing, Application tracing, system wide tracing, simple debugging
•     What you can’t do with DTrace/ What DTrace what not meant to do
•         Replace gdb, objective-c object introspection, etc
• Quick DTrace History
•     Who created it and why
•     DTrace history on Mac OS X
• DTrace design in Mac OS X
•     User space components ( Interfaces for Terminal/Instruments,libdtrace.dylib and what it does )
•     Kernel components ( interpreter, providers )
• How you interact with DTrace ( The D Language )
•     Event speculative language
•     awk like
•     Not turning complete (no branching, interation, user functions ,etc)
• How to learn Dtrace
•     Read Sun’s DTrace Documenation (most of it’s applicable to Mac OS X)
•     Play in terminal with simple scripts
•     Use the TextMate bundle (shameless self pimping of product)
• DTrace & Cocoa/Objective-C
•     Objective-C Provider
•     pid provider for garbage collection / tracing functions from cocoa into Core Foundation, other libraries
• DTrace & Instruments
•     Built In Instruments (most relevant to Cocoa Developers )
•     Core Data
•     Garbage Collector ( AutoZone )
•     Cocoa Events
•     Custom Instruments
• Embedding DTrace in your app ( USDT Probes or Userland Static Probes )
•     Provider file
•     Using the probes in your code
• DTrace / iTunes / Quicktime / Fairplay DRM Controversy & DTrace on pre 10.5.3 systems (disabling DTrace on your app)
• What will be added in DTrace for Snow Leopard? (to the extent that we aren’t breaking NDA’s)
•     New probes for new technologies
•     What providers do developers want?

Links

Articles and Videos By Colin

• Debug Cocoa with DTrace Guide & Embedding DTrace into Xcode Video
• Debugging Cocoa with DTrace guide

Sun’s DTrace Documentation

• (Intro “DTrace User Guide”) http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/819-5488
• (Deep Reference “Solaris Dynamic Tracing Guide”) http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/817-6223

DTrace for Cocoa Developers Video w/Source
http://cocoasamurai.blogspot.com/2008/05/dtrace-for-cocoa-developers.html
download it from viddler at http://www.viddler.com/explore/Machx/videos/4/

The DTrace TextMate Bundle
http://github.com/Machx/dtrace-textmate-bundle/tree/master

If you want to know more about Operating System Design try these books