Search code examples
androideclipsearmds-5streamline

How to use the DS5 to graphically preview data that were captured by a different tool?

DS-5 is a tool available from ARM which provides an Eclipse user interface for debugging and perform profiling analysis.

I would like to use the community version in eclipse of its streamline to perform my own open community visual offline profiler. I would either to rebase the source code or to generate an input file for it. Basically the Idea is to use the DS-5 open community source code or to config the exist version in eclipse so the following will hold:

  • I can generate an offline log contains (tid, timestamp) and when the system was in idle. all this written in an .xml or .txt file.
  • I would be able to see the generated log with the streamline graphically like that:

alt text
(source: arm.com)

streamline
(source: arm.com)

Solution

  • DS-5 is ARM's "Development Studio" which is ARM's extended toolchain for high end Cortex-A processors. It has various types of packaging depending on your needs, and one being promoted as Community which is free of charge.

    DS-5 is a mixture of software packages. While some parts have open licenses, unfortunately I strongly believe Streamline doesn't belong to this category. It's source code is also not available.

    However parts of the Streamline package that runs on target which are kernel module named gator and user level daemon named gatord are GPLv2.

    Now to your questions;

    ARM DS-5 Streamline already allows you to capture counter values in an offline way meaning you can start capturing from command line.

    ARM DS-5 Streamline already provides the mechanisms to allow you to create custom performance counters, this is quite possible because all the changes you have to do lies in software running on your target which licensed under GPLv2, so you should be able to redistribute those. Streamline UI will be smart enough to provide you graphs of those values later on when you open captured file with it.

    I should admit I don't know if Community licensed Streamline can display custom performance counters, this is something you should try your own.