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authorJosé Fonseca <jfonseca@vmware.com>2015-01-20 14:27:04 +0000
committerJosé Fonseca <jfonseca@vmware.com>2015-01-20 14:32:09 +0000
commit2127819aa05d65215b861d9b83d9255ddb73fb55 (patch)
tree423e320ccbd5123bf8462b71655f8f4acf371ae1 /docs
parentc345e0d808473b01aaf76dae6a7d72ca7f41ff54 (diff)
docs: Split usage instructions into its own file.
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+Basic usage
+===========
+
+Run the application you want to trace as
+
+ apitrace trace --api API /path/to/application [args...]
+
+and it will generate a trace named `application.trace` in the current
+directory. You can specify the written trace filename by passing the
+`--output` command line option.
+
+Problems while tracing (e.g, if the application uses calls/parameters
+unsupported by apitrace) will be reported via stderr output on Unices. On
+Windows you'll need to run
+[DebugView](http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896647) to view
+these messages.
+
+Follow the "Tracing manually" instructions below if you cannot obtain a trace.
+
+View the trace with
+
+ apitrace dump application.trace
+
+Replay an OpenGL trace with
+
+ apitrace replay application.trace
+
+Pass the `--sb` option to use a single buffered visual. Pass `--help` to
+`apitrace replay` for more options.
+
+
+Basic GUI usage
+===============
+
+Start the GUI as
+
+ qapitrace application.trace
+
+You can also tell the GUI to go directly to a specific call
+
+ qapitrace application.trace 12345
+
+
+Backtrace Capturing
+===================
+
+apitrace now has the ability to capture the call stack to an OpenGL call.
+This can be helpful in determing which piece of code made that glDrawArrays call.
+
+*NOTE* this feature is currently only available on Android and Linux at the moment.
+
+On linux you need to have libunwind, and libdwarf installed to compile in the feature.
+
+To use the feature you need to set an environment variable with the list of GL
+call prefixes you wish to capture stack traces to.
+
+ export APITRACE_BACKTRACE="glDraw* glUniform*"
+
+The backtrace data will show up in qapitrace in the bottom section as a new tab.
+
+
+Advanced command line usage
+===========================
+
+
+Call sets
+---------
+
+Several tools take `CALLSET` arguments, e.g:
+
+ apitrace dump --calls=CALLSET foo.trace
+ apitrace dump-images --calls=CALLSET foo.trace
+ apitrace trim --calls=CALLSET1 --calls=CALLSET2 foo.trace
+
+The call syntax is very flexible. Here are a few examples:
+
+ * `4` one call
+
+ * `0,2,4,5` set of calls
+
+ * `"0 2 4 5"` set of calls (commas are optional and can be replaced with whitespace)
+
+ * `0-100/2` calls 1, 3, 5, ..., 99
+
+ * `0-1000/draw` all draw calls between 0 and 1000
+
+ * `0-1000/fbo` all fbo changes between calls 0 and 1000
+
+ * `frame` all calls at end of frames
+
+ * `@foo.txt` read call numbers from `foo.txt`, using the same syntax as above
+
+
+
+Tracing manually
+----------------
+
+### Linux ###
+
+On 64 bits systems, you'll need to determine whether the application is 64 bits
+or 32 bits. This can be done by doing
+
+ file /path/to/application
+
+But beware of wrapper shell scripts -- what matters is the architecture of the
+main process.
+
+Run the GLX application you want to trace as
+
+ LD_PRELOAD=/path/to/apitrace/wrappers/glxtrace.so /path/to/application
+
+and it will generate a trace named `application.trace` in the current
+directory. You can specify the written trace filename by setting the
+`TRACE_FILE` environment variable before running.
+
+For EGL applications you will need to use `egltrace.so` instead of
+`glxtrace.so`.
+
+The `LD_PRELOAD` mechanism should work with the majority of applications. There
+are some applications (e.g., Unigine Heaven, Android GPU emulator, etc.), that
+have global function pointers with the same name as OpenGL entrypoints, living in a
+shared object that wasn't linked with `-Bsymbolic` flag, so relocations to
+those global function pointers get overwritten with the address to our wrapper
+library, and the application will segfault when trying to write to them. For
+these applications it is possible to trace by using `glxtrace.so` as an
+ordinary `libGL.so` and injecting it via `LD_LIBRARY_PATH`:
+
+ ln -s glxtrace.so wrappers/libGL.so
+ ln -s glxtrace.so wrappers/libGL.so.1
+ ln -s glxtrace.so wrappers/libGL.so.1.2
+ export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/path/to/apitrace/wrappers:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
+ export TRACE_LIBGL=/path/to/real/libGL.so.1
+ /path/to/application
+
+If you are an application developer, you can avoid this either by linking with
+`-Bsymbolic` flag, or by using some unique prefix for your function pointers.
+
+See the `ld.so` man page for more information about `LD_PRELOAD` and
+`LD_LIBRARY_PATH` environment flags.
+
+### Android ###
+
+To trace standalone native OpenGL ES applications, use
+`LD_PRELOAD=/path/to/egltrace.so /path/to/application` as described in the
+previous section. To trace Java applications, refer to Dalvik.markdown.
+
+### Mac OS X ###
+
+Run the application you want to trace as
+
+ DYLD_FRAMEWORK_PATH=/path/to/apitrace/wrappers /path/to/application
+
+Note that although Mac OS X has an `LD_PRELOAD` equivalent,
+`DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES`, it is mostly useless because it only works with
+`DYLD_FORCE_FLAT_NAMESPACE=1` which breaks most applications. See the `dyld` man
+page for more details about these environment flags.
+
+### Windows ###
+
+When tracing third-party applications, you can identify the target
+application's main executable, either by:
+
+* right clicking on the application's icon in the _Start Menu_, choose
+ _Properties_, and see the _Target_ field;
+
+* or by starting the application, run Windows Task Manager (taskmgr.exe), right
+ click on the application name in the _Applications_ tab, choose _Go To Process_,
+ note the highlighted _Image Name_, and search it on `C:\Program Files` or
+ `C:\Program Files (x86)`.
+
+On 64 bits Windows, you'll need to determine ether the application is a 64 bits
+or 32 bits. 32 bits applications will have a `*32` suffix in the _Image Name_
+column of the _Processes_ tab of _Windows Task Manager_ window.
+
+You also need to know which graphics API is being used. If you are unsure, the
+simplest way to determine what API an application uses is to:
+
+* download and run [Process Explorer](http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx)
+
+* search and select the application's process in _Process Explorer_
+
+* list the DLLs by pressing `Ctrl + D`
+
+* sort DLLs alphabetically, and look for the DLLs such as `opengl32.dll`,
+ `d3d9.dll`, `d3d10.dll`, etc.
+
+Copy the appropriate `opengl32.dll`, `d3d8.dll`, or `d3d9.dll` from the
+wrappers directory to the directory with the application you want to trace.
+Then run the application as usual.
+
+You can specify the written trace filename by setting the `TRACE_FILE`
+environment variable before running.
+
+For D3D10 and higher you really must use `apitrace trace -a DXGI ...`. This is
+because D3D10-11 API span many DLLs which depend on each other, and once a DLL
+with a given name is loaded Windows will reuse it for LoadLibrary calls of the
+same name, causing internal calls to be traced erroneously. `apitrace trace`
+solves this issue by injecting a DLL `dxgitrace.dll` and patching all modules
+to hook only the APIs of interest.
+
+
+Emitting annotations to the trace
+---------------------------------
+
+From within OpenGL applications you can embed annotations in the trace file
+through the following extensions:
+
+* [`GL_KHR_debug`](http://www.opengl.org/registry/specs/KHR/debug.txt)
+
+* [`GL_ARB_debug_output`](http://www.opengl.org/registry/specs/ARB/debug_output.txt)
+
+* [`GL_EXT_debug_marker`](http://www.khronos.org/registry/gles/extensions/EXT/EXT_debug_marker.txt)
+
+* [`GL_EXT_debug_label`](http://www.opengl.org/registry/specs/EXT/EXT_debug_label.txt)
+
+* [`GL_AMD_debug_output`](http://www.opengl.org/registry/specs/AMD/debug_output.txt)
+
+* [`GL_GREMEDY_string_marker`](http://www.opengl.org/registry/specs/GREMEDY/string_marker.txt)
+
+* [`GL_GREMEDY_frame_terminator`](http://www.opengl.org/registry/specs/GREMEDY/frame_terminator.txt)
+
+**apitrace** will advertise and intercept these OpenGL extensions regardless
+of whether the OpenGL implementation supports them or not. So all you have
+to do is to use these extensions when available, and you can be sure they
+will be available when tracing inside **apitrace**.
+
+For example, if you use [GLEW](http://glew.sourceforge.net/) to dynamically
+detect and use OpenGL extensions, you could easily accomplish this by doing:
+
+ void foo() {
+
+ if (GLEW_KHR_debug) {
+ glPushDebugGroup(GL_DEBUG_SOURCE_APPLICATION, 0, -1, __FUNCTION__);
+ }
+
+ ...
+
+ if (GLEW_KHR_debug) {
+ glDebugMessageInsert(GL_DEBUG_SOURCE_APPLICATION, GL_DEBUG_TYPE_OTHER,
+ 0, GL_DEBUG_SEVERITY_MEDIUM, -1, "bla bla");
+ }
+
+ ...
+
+ if (GLEW_KHR_debug) {
+ glPopDebugGroup();
+ }
+
+ }
+
+This has the added advantage of working equally well with other OpenGL debugging tools.
+
+Also, provided that the OpenGL implementation supports `GL_KHR_debug`, labels
+defined via glObjectLabel() , and the labels of several objects (textures,
+framebuffers, samplers, etc. ) will appear in the GUI state dumps, in the
+parameters tab.
+
+
+For OpenGL ES applications you can embed annotations in the trace file through the
+[`GL_KHR_debug`](http://www.khronos.org/registry/gles/extensions/KHR/debug.txt) or
+[`GL_EXT_debug_marker`](http://www.khronos.org/registry/gles/extensions/EXT/EXT_debug_marker.txt)
+extensions.
+
+
+For Direct3D applications you can follow the standard procedure for
+[adding user defined events to Visual Studio Graphics Debugger / PIX](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/hh873200.aspx):
+
+- `D3DPERF_BeginEvent`, `D3DPERF_EndEvent`, and `D3DPERF_SetMarker` for D3D9 applications.
+
+- `ID3DUserDefinedAnnotation::BeginEvent`,
+ `ID3DUserDefinedAnnotation::EndEvent`, and
+ `ID3DUserDefinedAnnotation::SetMarker` for D3D11.1 applications.
+
+
+Dump OpenGL state at a particular call
+----------------------------------
+
+You can get a dump of the bound OpenGL state at call 12345 by doing:
+
+ apitrace replay -D 12345 application.trace > 12345.json
+
+This is precisely the mechanism the GUI uses to obtain its own state.
+
+You can compare two state dumps by doing:
+
+ apitrace diff-state 12345.json 67890.json
+
+
+Comparing two traces side by side
+---------------------------------
+
+ apitrace diff trace1.trace trace2.trace
+
+This works only on Unices, and it will truncate the traces due to performance
+limitations.
+
+
+Recording a video with FFmpeg/Libav
+-----------------------------------
+
+You can make a video of the output with FFmpeg by doing
+
+ apitrace dump-images -o - application.trace \
+ | ffmpeg -r 30 -f image2pipe -vcodec ppm -i pipe: -vcodec mpeg4 -y output.mp4
+
+or Libav (which replaces FFmpeg on recent Debian/Ubuntu distros) doing
+
+ apitrace dump-images -o - application.trace \
+ | avconv -r 30 -f image2pipe -vcodec ppm -i - -vcodec mpeg4 -y output.mp4
+
+Recording a video with gstreamer
+--------------------------------------
+
+You can make a video of the output with gstreamer by doing
+
+ glretrace --snapshot-format=RGB -s - smokinguns.trace | gst-launch-0.10 fdsrc blocksize=409600 ! queue \
+ ! videoparse format=rgb width=1920 height=1080 ! queue ! ffmpegcolorspace ! queue \
+ ! vaapiupload direct-rendering=0 ! queue ! vaapiencodeh264 ! filesink location=xxx.264
+
+Trimming a trace
+----------------
+
+You can truncate a trace by doing:
+
+ apitrace trim --exact --calls 0-12345 -o trimed.trace application.trace
+
+If you need precise control over which calls to trim you can specify the
+individual call numbers in a plain text file, as described in the 'Call sets'
+section above.
+
+There is also experimental support for automatically trimming the calls
+necessary for a given frame or call:
+
+ apitrace trim --auto --calls=12345 -o trimed.trace application.trace
+ apitrace trim --auto --frames=12345 -o trimed.trace application.trace
+
+
+Profiling a trace
+-----------------
+
+You can perform gpu and cpu profiling with the command line options:
+
+ * `--pgpu` record gpu times for frames and draw calls.
+
+ * `--pcpu` record cpu times for frames and draw calls.
+
+ * `--ppd` record pixels drawn for each draw call.
+
+The results from these can then be read by hand or analyzed with a script.
+
+`scripts/profileshader.py` will read the profile results and format them into a
+table which displays profiling results per shader.
+
+For example, to record all profiling data and utilise the per shader script:
+
+ apitrace replay --pgpu --pcpu --ppd foo.trace | ./scripts/profileshader.py
+
+
+Advanced usage for OpenGL implementors
+======================================
+
+There are several advanced usage examples meant for OpenGL implementors.
+
+
+Regression testing
+------------------
+
+These are the steps to create a regression test-suite around **apitrace**:
+
+* obtain a trace
+
+* obtain reference snapshots, by doing on a reference system:
+
+ mkdir /path/to/reference/snapshots/
+ apitrace dump-images -o /path/to/reference/snapshots/ application.trace
+
+* prune the snapshots which are not interesting
+
+* to do a regression test, use `apitrace diff-images`:
+
+ apitrace dump-images -o /path/to/test/snapshots/ application.trace
+ apitrace diff-images --output summary.html /path/to/reference/snapshots/ /path/to/test/snapshots/
+
+
+Automated git-bisection
+-----------------------
+
+With tracecheck.py it is possible to automate git bisect and pinpoint the
+commit responsible for a regression.
+
+Below is an example of using tracecheck.py to bisect a regression in the
+Mesa-based Intel 965 driver. But the procedure could be applied to any OpenGL
+driver hosted on a git repository.
+
+First, create a build script, named build-script.sh, containing:
+
+ #!/bin/sh
+ set -e
+ export PATH=/usr/lib/ccache:$PATH
+ export CFLAGS='-g'
+ export CXXFLAGS='-g'
+ ./autogen.sh --disable-egl --disable-gallium --disable-glut --disable-glu --disable-glw --with-dri-drivers=i965
+ make clean
+ make "$@"
+
+It is important that builds are both robust, and efficient. Due to broken
+dependency discovery in Mesa's makefile system, it was necessary to invoke `make
+clean` in every iteration step. `ccache` should be installed to avoid
+recompiling unchanged source files.
+
+Then do:
+
+ cd /path/to/mesa
+ export LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose
+ export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$PWD/lib
+ export LIBGL_DRIVERS_DIR=$PWD/lib
+ git bisect start \
+ 6491e9593d5cbc5644eb02593a2f562447efdcbb 71acbb54f49089b03d3498b6f88c1681d3f649ac \
+ -- src/mesa/drivers/dri/intel src/mesa/drivers/dri/i965/
+ git bisect run /path/to/tracecheck.py \
+ --precision-threshold 8.0 \
+ --build /path/to/build-script.sh \
+ --gl-renderer '.*Mesa.*Intel.*' \
+ --retrace=/path/to/glretrace \
+ -c /path/to/reference/snapshots/ \
+ topogun-1.06-orc-84k.trace
+
+The trace-check.py script will skip automatically when there are build
+failures.
+
+The `--gl-renderer` option will also cause a commit to be skipped if the
+`GL_RENDERER` is unexpected (e.g., when a software renderer or another OpenGL
+driver is unintentionally loaded due to a missing symbol in the DRI driver, or
+another runtime fault).
+
+
+Side by side retracing
+----------------------
+
+In order to determine which draw call a regression first manifests one could
+generate snapshots for every draw call, using the `-S` option. That is, however,
+very inefficient for big traces with many draw calls.
+
+A faster approach is to run both the bad and a good OpenGL driver side-by-side.
+The latter can be either a previously known good build of the OpenGL driver, or a
+reference software renderer.
+
+This can be achieved with retracediff.py script, which invokes glretrace with
+different environments, allowing to choose the desired OpenGL driver by
+manipulating variables such as `LD_LIBRARY_PATH`, `LIBGL_DRIVERS_DIR`, or
+`TRACE_LIBGL`.
+
+For example, on Linux:
+
+ ./scripts/retracediff.py \
+ --ref-env LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/path/to/reference/OpenGL/implementation \
+ --retrace /path/to/glretrace \
+ --diff-prefix=/path/to/output/diffs \
+ application.trace
+
+Or on Windows:
+
+ python scripts\retracediff.py --retrace \path\to\glretrace.exe --ref-env TRACE_LIBGL=\path\to\reference\opengl32.dll application.trace
+
+
+Advanced GUI usage
+==================
+
+qapitrace has rudimentary support for replaying traces on a remote
+target device. This can be useful, for example, when developing for an
+embedded system. The primary GUI will run on the local host, while any
+replays will be performed on the target device.
+
+In order to target a remote device, use the command-line:
+
+ qapitrace --remote-target <HOST> <trace-file>
+
+In order for this to work, the following must be available in the
+system configuration:
+
+1. It must be possible for the current user to initiate an ssh session
+ that has access to the target's window system. The command to be
+ exectuted by qapitrace will be:
+
+ ssh <HOST> glretrace
+
+ For example, if the target device is using the X window system, one
+ can test whether an ssh session has access to the target X server
+ with:
+
+ ssh <HOST> xdpyinfo
+
+ If this command fails with something like "cannot open display"
+ then the user will have to configure the target to set the DISPLAY
+ environment variable, (for example, setting DISPLAY=:0 in the
+ .bashrc file on the target or similar).
+
+ Also, note that if the ssh session requires a custom username, then
+ this must be configured on the host side so that ssh can be
+ initiated without a username.
+
+ For example, if you normally connect with `ssh user@192.168.0.2`
+ you could configure ~/.ssh/config on the host with a block such as:
+
+ Host target
+ HostName 192.168.0.2
+ User user
+
+ And after this you should be able to connect with `ssh target` so
+ that you can also use `qapitrace --remote-target target`.
+
+2. The target host must have a functional glretrace binary available
+
+3. The target host must have access to <trace-file> at the same path
+ in the filesystem as the <trace-file> path on the host system being
+ passed to the qapitrace command line.