How to collect some readable stack traces with perf?

I want to profile C++ program on Linux using random sampling that is described in this answer:

However, if you're in a hurry and you can manually interrupt your program under the debugger while it's being subjectively slow, there's a simple way to find performance problems.

The problem is that I can't use gdb debugger because I want to profile on production under heavy load and debugger is too intrusive and considerably slows down the program. However I can use perf record and perf report for finding bottlenecks without affecting program performance. Is there a way to collect a number of readable (gdb like) stack traces with perf instead of gdb?

Solution

perf does offer callstack recording with three different techniques

By default is uses the frame pointer (fp). This is generally supported and performs well, but it doesn't work with certain optimizations. Compile your applications with -fno-omit-frame-pointer etc. to make sure it works well.
dwarf uses a dump of the sack for each sample for post-processing. That has a significant performance penalty
Modern systems can use hardware-supported last branch record, lbr.

The stack is accessible in perf analysis tools such as perf report or perf script.

For more details check out man perf-record.