4 **apitrace** consists of a set of tools to:
6 * trace OpenGL, OpenGL ES, D3D9, D3D8, D3D7, and DDRAW APIs calls to a file;
8 * retrace OpenGL and OpenGL ES calls from a file;
10 * inspect OpenGL state at any call while retracing;
12 * visualize and edit trace files.
15 Obtaining **apitrace**
16 ======================
18 To obtain apitrace either [download the latest
19 binaries](https://github.com/apitrace/apitrace/downloads) for your platform if
20 available, or follow the instructions in INSTALL.markdown to build it yourself.
21 On 64bits Linux and Windows platforms you'll need apitrace binaries that match
22 the architecture (32bits or 64bits) of the application being traced.
28 Run the application you want to trace as
30 apitrace trace --api API /path/to/application [args...]
32 and it will generate a trace named `application.trace` in the current
33 directory. You can specify the written trace filename by passing the
34 `--output` command line option.
36 Problems while tracing (e.g, if the application uses calls/parameters
37 unsupported by apitrace) will be reported via stderr output on Unices. On
38 Windows you'll need to run
39 [DebugView](http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896647) to view
42 Follow the "Tracing manually" instructions below if you cannot obtain a trace.
46 apitrace dump application.trace
48 Replay an OpenGL trace with
50 glretrace application.trace
52 Pass the `-sb` option to use a single buffered visual. Pass `--help` to
53 glretrace for more options.
61 qapitrace application.trace
63 You can also tell the GUI to go directly to a specific call
65 qapitrace application.trace 12345
68 Advanced command line usage
69 ===========================
75 Several tools take `CALLSET` arguments, e.g:
77 apitrace dump --calls CALLSET foo.trace
78 glretrace -S CALLSET foo.trace
80 The call syntax is very flexible. Here are a few examples:
84 * `1,2,4,5` set of calls
86 * `"1 2 4 5"` set of calls (commas are optional and can be replaced with whitespace)
88 * `1-100/2` calls 1, 3, 5, ..., 99
90 * `1-1000/draw` all draw calls between 1 and 1000
92 * `1-1000/fbo` all fbo changes between calls 1 and 1000
94 * `frame` all calls at end of frames
96 * `@foo.txt` read call numbers from `foo.txt`, using the same syntax as above
105 On 64 bits systems, you'll need to determine ether the application is 64 bits
106 or 32 bits. This can be done by doing
108 file /path/to/application
110 But beware of wrapper shell scripts -- what matters is the architecture of the
113 Run the application you want to trace as
115 LD_PRELOAD=/path/to/apitrace/wrappers/glxtrace.so /path/to/application
117 and it will generate a trace named `application.trace` in the current
118 directory. You can specify the written trace filename by setting the
119 `TRACE_FILE` environment variable before running.
121 The `LD_PRELOAD` mechanism should work with most applications. There are some
122 applications, e.g., Unigine Heaven, which global function pointers with the
123 same name as GL entrypoints, living in a shared object that wasn't linked with
124 `-Bsymbolic` flag, so relocations to those globals function pointers get
125 overwritten with the address to our wrapper library, and the application will
126 segfault when trying to write to them. For these applications it is possible
127 to trace by using `glxtrace.so` as an ordinary `libGL.so` and injecting into
130 ln -s glxtrace.so wrappers/libGL.so
131 ln -s glxtrace.so wrappers/libGL.so.1
132 ln -s glxtrace.so wrappers/libGL.so.1.2
133 export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/path/to/apitrace/wrappers:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
134 export TRACE_LIBGL=/path/to/real/libGL.so.1
137 See the `ld.so` man page for more information about `LD_PRELOAD` and
138 `LD_LIBRARY_PATH` environment flags.
140 To trace the application inside gdb, invoke gdb as:
142 gdb --ex 'set exec-wrapper env LD_PRELOAD=/path/to/glxtrace.so' --args /path/to/application
146 Run the application you want to trace as
148 DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=/path/to/apitrace/wrappers /path/to/application
150 Note that although Mac OS X has an `LD_PRELOAD` equivalent,
151 `DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES`, it is mostly useless because it only works with
152 `DYLD_FORCE_FLAT_NAMESPACE=1` which breaks most applications. See the `dyld` man
153 page for more details about these environment flags.
157 When tracing third-party applications, you can identify the target
158 application's main executable, either by:
160 * right clicking on the application's icon in the _Start Menu_, choose
161 _Properties_, and see the _Target_ field;
163 * or by starting the application, run Windows Task Manager (taskmgr.exe), right
164 click on the application name in the _Applications_ tab, choose _Go To Process_,
165 note the highlighted _Image Name_, and search it on `C:\Program Files` or
166 `C:\Program Files (x86)`.
168 On 64 bits Windows, you'll need to determine ether the application is a 64 bits
169 or 32 bits. 32 bits applications will have a `*32` suffix in the _Image Name_
170 column of the _Processes_ tab of _Windows Task Manager_ window.
172 Copy the appropriate `opengl32.dll`, `d3d8.dll`, or `d3d9.dll` from the
173 wrappers directory to the directory with the application you want to trace.
174 Then run the application as usual.
176 You can specify the written trace filename by setting the `TRACE_FILE`
177 environment variable before running.
180 Emitting annotations to the trace
181 ---------------------------------
183 From OpenGL applications you can embed annotations in the trace file through the
184 [`GL_GREMEDY_string_marker`](http://www.opengl.org/registry/specs/GREMEDY/string_marker.txt)
186 [`GL_GREMEDY_frame_terminator`](http://www.opengl.org/registry/specs/GREMEDY/frame_terminator.txt)
189 **apitrace** will advertise and intercept these GL extensions independently of
190 the GL implementation. So all you have to do is to use these extensions when
193 For example, if you use [GLEW](http://glew.sourceforge.net/) to dynamically
194 detect and use GL extensions, you could easily accomplish this by doing:
198 if (GLEW_GREMEDY_string_marker) {
199 glStringMarkerGREMEDY(0, __FUNCTION__ ": enter");
204 if (GLEW_GREMEDY_string_marker) {
205 glStringMarkerGREMEDY(0, __FUNCTION__ ": leave");
210 This has the added advantage of working equally well with gDEBugger.
213 From OpenGL ES applications you can embed annotations in the trace file through the
214 [`GL_EXT_debug_marker`](http://www.khronos.org/registry/gles/extensions/EXT/EXT_debug_marker.txt)
218 For Direct3D applications you can follow the same procedure used for
219 [instrumenting an application for PIX](http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/query/ee417250)
222 Dump GL state at a particular call
223 ----------------------------------
225 You can get a dump of the bound GL state at call 12345 by doing:
227 glretrace -D 12345 application.trace > 12345.json
229 This is precisely the mechanism the GUI obtains its own state.
231 You can compare two state dumps by doing:
233 apitrace diff-state 12345.json 67890.json
236 Comparing two traces side by side
237 ---------------------------------
239 apitrace diff trace1.trace trace2.trace
241 This works only on Unices, and it will truncate the traces due to performance
245 Recording a video with FFmpeg
246 -----------------------------
248 You can make a video of the output by doing
250 glretrace -s - application.trace \
251 | ffmpeg -r 30 -f image2pipe -vcodec ppm -i pipe: -vcodec mpeg4 -y output.mp4
257 You can make a smaller trace by doing:
259 apitrace trim --callset 100-1000 -o trimed.trace applicated.trace
261 If you need precise control over which calls to trim you can specify the
262 individual call numbers a plaintext file, as described in the 'Call sets'
266 Advanced usage for OpenGL implementors
267 ======================================
269 There are several advanced usage examples meant for OpenGL implementors.
275 These are the steps to create a regression test-suite around **apitrace**:
279 * obtain reference snapshots, by doing on a reference system:
281 mkdir /path/to/reference/snapshots/
282 glretrace -s /path/to/reference/snapshots/ application.trace
284 * prune the snapshots which are not interesting
286 * to do a regression test, do:
288 glretrace -c /path/to/reference/snapshots/ application.trace
290 Alternatively, for a HTML summary, use `apitrace diff-images`:
292 glretrace -s /path/to/test/snapshots/ application.trace
293 apitrace diff-images --output summary.html /path/to/reference/snapshots/ /path/to/test/snapshots/
296 Automated git-bisection
297 -----------------------
299 With tracecheck.py it is possible to automate git bisect and pinpoint the
300 commit responsible for a regression.
302 Below is an example of using tracecheck.py to bisect a regression in the
303 Mesa-based Intel 965 driver. But the procedure could be applied to any GL
304 driver hosted on a git repository.
306 First, create a build script, named build-script.sh, containing:
310 export PATH=/usr/lib/ccache:$PATH
313 ./autogen.sh --disable-egl --disable-gallium --disable-glut --disable-glu --disable-glw --with-dri-drivers=i965
317 It is important that builds are both robust, and efficient. Due to broken
318 dependency discovery in Mesa's makefile system, it was necessary invoke `make
319 clean` in every iteration step. `ccache` should be installed to avoid
320 recompiling unchanged source files.
325 export LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose
326 export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$PWD/lib
327 export LIBGL_DRIVERS_DIR=$PWD/lib
329 6491e9593d5cbc5644eb02593a2f562447efdcbb 71acbb54f49089b03d3498b6f88c1681d3f649ac \
330 -- src/mesa/drivers/dri/intel src/mesa/drivers/dri/i965/
331 git bisect run /path/to/tracecheck.py \
332 --precision-threshold 8.0 \
333 --build /path/to/build-script.sh \
334 --gl-renderer '.*Mesa.*Intel.*' \
335 --retrace=/path/to/glretrace \
336 -c /path/to/reference/snapshots/ \
337 topogun-1.06-orc-84k.trace
339 The trace-check.py script will skip automatically when there are build
342 The `--gl-renderer` option will also cause a commit to be skipped if the
343 `GL_RENDERER` is unexpected (e.g., when a software renderer or another GL
344 driver is unintentionally loaded due to missing symbol in the DRI driver, or
345 another runtime fault).
348 Side by side retracing
349 ----------------------
351 In order to determine which draw call a regression first manifests one could
352 generate snapshots for every draw call, using the `-S` option. That is, however,
353 very inefficient for big traces with many draw calls.
355 A faster approach is to run both the bad and a good GL driver side-by-side.
356 The latter can be either a previously known good build of the GL driver, or a
357 reference software renderer.
359 This can be achieved with retracediff.py script, which invokes glretrace with
360 different environments, allowing to choose the desired GL driver by
361 manipulating variables such as `LD_LIBRARY_PATH` or `LIBGL_DRIVERS_DIR`.
365 ./scripts/retracediff.py \
366 --ref-env LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/path/to/reference/GL/implementation \
368 --diff-prefix=/path/to/output/diffs \
378 * [Official mailing list](http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/apitrace)
380 * [Zack Rusin's blog introducing the GUI](http://zrusin.blogspot.com/2011/04/apitrace.html)
382 * [Jose's Fonseca blog introducing the tool](http://jrfonseca.blogspot.com/2008/07/tracing-d3d-applications.html)
390 * [Proxy DLL](http://www.mikoweb.eu/index.php?node=21)
392 * [Intercept Calls to DirectX with a Proxy DLL](http://www.codeguru.com/cpp/g-m/directx/directx8/article.php/c11453/)
394 * [Direct3D 9 API Interceptor](http://graphics.stanford.edu/~mdfisher/D3D9Interceptor.html)
398 * [Microsoft PIX](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee417062.aspx)
400 * [D3DSpy](http://doc.51windows.net/Directx9_SDK/?url=/directx9_sdk/graphics/programmingguide/TutorialsAndSamplesAndToolsAndTips/Tools/D3DSpy.htm): the predecessor of PIX
402 * [NVIDIA PerfKit](http://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-perfkit)
404 * [AMD GPU PerfStudio](http://developer.amd.com/gpu/PerfStudio/pages/APITraceWindow.aspx)
406 * [Intel Graphics Performance Analyzers](http://www.intel.com/software/gpa/)
414 * [BuGLe](http://www.opengl.org/sdk/tools/BuGLe/)
416 * [GLIntercept](http://code.google.com/p/glintercept/)
418 * [tracy](https://gitorious.org/tracy): OpenGL ES and OpenVG trace, retrace, and state inspection
420 * [WebGL-Inspector](http://benvanik.github.com/WebGL-Inspector/)
424 * [gDEBugger](http://www.gremedy.com/products.php) and [AMD gDEBugger](http://developer.amd.com/tools/gDEBugger/Pages/default.aspx)
426 * [glslDevil](http://cumbia.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/glsldevil/index.html)
428 * [AMD GPU PerfStudio](http://developer.amd.com/gpu/PerfStudio/pages/APITraceWindow.aspx)