Profiling C code, interpreting results

[Ernst Blofeld]

I'e just run my lockdown project through the profiler and it's making me feel a bit thick. Does anyone know how to interpret results like these? I was expecting something like a drill down that would let me pick out the hot spots, but this is more like a wall of pink and orange rectangles.

Edit: I've played around a bit more and found that the mouse wheel scrolls in and clicking on an empty spot resets the zoom out to max, but I still don't get what I'm seeing, in particular, in my last few runs, _start and main appear several times, which surely can't be right.

Edit 2:

I now see, it's not what I thought it was, it profiles a single frame, i.e, 1/50th of a second.

Frame Profiler: function-level + DMA profiling: during a debugging session, press the Profile button on the right of the debug toolbar, and 1 frame will be profiled. Press the rightmost button to profile 50 frames. Mark your WaitVBLs etc with calls to debug_start_idle() and debug_stop_idle() to show correct CPU usage under thumbnails.

I can't find this button to profile 50 frames though. If I could I could probably get what I need.

Is there a more traditional profiler available anywhere?

[pink^abyss]

The profile "50 frames" button is right to the STOP button. It looks like a chart with 3 bars.

Here some help for the profiler:
The profiler measures the time your functions needed.
Left is start of profile time, right is end of profile time(usually start and and end of frame).
Top -> down shows the callstack of the functions. So function "_start" calls "main" which calls "game" which calls "Draw" etc.
I'm not sure why "DrawSection" is outside the callgraph. Maybe a bug.

You can press left mouse on "> CPU" to unfold a text callgraph.
Perhaps this is what you are looking for.

I hope this helps.

[Ernst Blofeld]

Originally Posted by pink^abyss

The profile "50 frames" button is right to the STOP button. It looks like a chart with 3 bars.

I don't have that, I have just the STOP button, then the text "Profile", nothing else.

[Bartman]

You still have the old version from the marketplace, I recommend you get the latest preview version from GitHub

[Ernst Blofeld]

Originally Posted by Bartman

the latest preview33 version from GitHub

Thanks, I've installed that now, and it's pretty awesome.

For it to be even more awesome I need to be able to select some or all of the frames to get aggregate results, even if they're limited to just the main function timings.

But even without that it's giving me very useful information.

[tolkien]

Hiz! Looking at the profile section I see it is colourful with all that information but I cant get that in my vscode. All I see is a black screen.
Perhaps is a theme problem?