MI: performance of getting stack arguments

[Daniel Jacobowitz]

On Tue, Apr 18, 2006 at 08:10:34PM +0400, Vladimir Prus wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> I've run into a performance problem with "-stack-list-arguments 1" command.
> I issue the command in order to obtain stack arguments for all frames, and
> I've 129 frames. Each frame has just a couple of arguments. However, the
> command execution takes 608 ms.
> 
> If this command is issued repeatedly, the time is roughly the same. 
> 
> 1. Any ideas why the command takes so long?

It's reading a lot of memory, probably.  Is it really the arguments,
rather than the backtrace, causing the delay?  If it's the arguments,
we may be able to improve it.  Maybe build a debuggable GDB and "maint
set profile"?

> 2. Any ideas what should I do to to avoid making user wait half-a-second on
> each "step"? I can try to reload stack only when current frame id changes.
> But then, each time I enter a new function, there's still that
> half-a-second delay. 

Probably only some of these are visible; you could just do the visible
ones?  Or, eventually, you could do what Xcode does and get stack IDs
from GDB, and assume that arguments haven't changed on step in.  I find
that a bit shady though, given how likely it is that their "apparent"
values will change.

-- 
Daniel Jacobowitz
CodeSourcery