4 **apitrace** consists of a set of tools to:
6 * trace OpenGL, D3D9, D3D8, D3D7, and DDRAW APIs calls to a file;
8 * retrace OpenGL calls from a file;
10 * inspect OpenGL state at any call while retracing;
12 * visualize and edit trace files.
22 Run the application you want to trace as
24 /path/to/apitrace trace /path/to/application [args...]
26 and it will generate a trace named `application.trace` in the current
27 directory. You can specify the written trace filename by setting the
28 `TRACE_FILE` environment variable before running.
32 /path/to/apitrace dump --color application.trace | less -R
36 /path/to/glretrace application.trace
38 Pass the `-sb` option to use a single buffered visual. Pass `--help` to
39 glretrace for more options.
43 /path/to/qapitrace application.trace
49 * Copy `opengl32.dll`, `d3d8.dll`, or `d3d9.dll` from build/wrappers directory
50 to the directory with the application you want to trace.
52 * Run the application.
56 \path\to\apitrace dump application.trace
58 * Replay the trace with
60 \path\to\glretrace application.trace
63 Advanced command line usage
64 ===========================
72 Run the application you want to trace as
74 LD_PRELOAD=/path/to/apitrace/wrappers/glxtrace.so /path/to/application
76 and it will generate a trace named `application.trace` in the current
77 directory. You can specify the written trace filename by setting the
78 `TRACE_FILE` environment variable before running.
80 The `LD_PRELOAD` mechanism should work with most applications. There are some
81 applications, e.g., Unigine Heaven, which global function pointers with the
82 same name as GL entrypoints, living in a shared object that wasn't linked with
83 `-Bsymbolic` flag, so relocations to those globals function pointers get
84 overwritten with the address to our wrapper library, and the application will
85 segfault when trying to write to them. For these applications it is possible
86 to trace by using `glxtrace.so` as an ordinary `libGL.so` and injecting into
89 ln -s glxtrace.so wrappers/libGL.so
90 ln -s glxtrace.so wrappers/libGL.so.1
91 ln -s glxtrace.so wrappers/libGL.so.1.2
92 export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/path/to/apitrace/wrappers:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
93 export TRACE_LIBGL=/path/to/real/libGL.so.1
96 See the `ld.so` man page for more information about `LD_PRELOAD` and
97 `LD_LIBRARY_PATH` environment flags.
101 Run the application you want to trace as
103 DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=/path/to/apitrace/wrappers /path/to/application
105 Note that although Mac OS X has an `LD_PRELOAD` equivalent,
106 `DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES`, it is mostly useless because it only works with
107 `DYLD_FORCE_FLAT_NAMESPACE=1` which breaks most applications. See the `dyld` man
108 page for more details about these environment flags.
111 Emitting annotations to the trace from GL applications
112 ------------------------------------------------------
114 You can emit string and frame annotations through the
115 [`GL_GREMEDY_string_marker`](http://www.opengl.org/registry/specs/GREMEDY/string_marker.txt)
117 [`GL_GREMEDY_frame_terminator`](http://www.opengl.org/registry/specs/GREMEDY/frame_terminator.txt)
120 **apitrace** will advertise and intercept these GL extensions independently of
121 the GL implementation. So all you have to do is to use these extensions when
124 For example, if you use [GLEW](http://glew.sourceforge.net/) to dynamically
125 detect and use GL extensions, you could easily accomplish this by doing:
129 if (GLEW_GREMEDY_string_marker) {
130 glStringMarkerGREMEDY(0, __FUNCTION__ ": enter");
135 if (GLEW_GREMEDY_string_marker) {
136 glStringMarkerGREMEDY(0, __FUNCTION__ ": leave");
141 This has the added advantage of working equally well with gDEBugger.
144 Dump GL state at a particular call
145 ----------------------------------
147 You can get a dump of the bound GL state at call 12345 by doing:
149 /path/to/glretrace -D 12345 application.trace > 12345.json
151 This is precisely the mechanism the GUI obtains its own state.
153 You can compare two state dumps with the jsondiff.py script:
155 ./scripts/jsondiff.py 12345.json 67890.json
158 Comparing two traces side by side
159 ---------------------------------
161 apitrace diff trace1.trace trace2.trace
163 This works only on Unices, and it will truncate the traces due to performance
167 Recording a video with FFmpeg
168 -----------------------------
170 You can make a video of the output by doing
172 /path/to/glretrace -s - application.trace \
173 | ffmpeg -r 30 -f image2pipe -vcodec ppm -i pipe: -vcodec mpeg4 -y output.mp4
176 Advanced usage for OpenGL implementors
177 ======================================
179 There are several advanced usage examples meant for OpenGL implementors.
185 These are the steps to create a regression test-suite around **apitrace**:
189 * obtain reference snapshots, by doing:
191 mkdir /path/to/snapshots/
192 /path/to/glretrace -s /path/to/reference/snapshots/ application.trace
196 * prune the snapshots which are not interesting
198 * to do a regression test, do:
200 /path/to/glretrace -c /path/to/reference/snapshots/ application.trace
202 Alternatively, for a HTML summary, use the snapdiff script:
204 /path/to/glretrace -s /path/to/current/snapshots/ application.trace
205 ./scripts/snapdiff.py --output summary.html /path/to/reference/snapshots/ /path/to/current/snapshots/
208 Automated git-bisection
209 -----------------------
211 With tracecheck.py it is possible to automate git bisect and pinpoint the
212 commit responsible for a regression.
214 Below is an example of using tracecheck.py to bisect a regression in the
215 Mesa-based Intel 965 driver. But the procedure could be applied to any GL
216 driver hosted on a git repository.
218 First, create a build script, named build-script.sh, containing:
222 export PATH=/usr/lib/ccache:$PATH
225 ./autogen.sh --disable-egl --disable-gallium --disable-glut --disable-glu --disable-glw --with-dri-drivers=i965
229 It is important that builds are both robust, and efficient. Due to broken
230 dependency discovery in Mesa's makefile system, it was necessary invoke `make
231 clean` in every iteration step. `ccache` should be installed to avoid
232 recompiling unchanged source files.
237 export LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose
238 export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$PWD/lib
239 export LIBGL_DRIVERS_DIR=$PWD/lib
241 6491e9593d5cbc5644eb02593a2f562447efdcbb 71acbb54f49089b03d3498b6f88c1681d3f649ac \
242 -- src/mesa/drivers/dri/intel src/mesa/drivers/dri/i965/
243 git bisect run /path/to/tracecheck.py \
244 --precision-threshold 8.0 \
245 --build /path/to/build-script.sh \
246 --gl-renderer '.*Mesa.*Intel.*' \
247 --retrace=/path/to/glretrace \
248 -c /path/to/reference/snapshots/ \
249 topogun-1.06-orc-84k.trace
251 The trace-check.py script will skip automatically when there are build
254 The `--gl-renderer` option will also cause a commit to be skipped if the
255 `GL_RENDERER` is unexpected (e.g., when a software renderer or another GL
256 driver is unintentionally loaded due to missing symbol in the DRI driver, or
257 another runtime fault).
260 Side by side retracing
261 ----------------------
263 In order to determine which draw call a regression first manifests one could
264 generate snapshots for every draw call, using the `-S` option. That is, however,
265 very inefficient for big traces with many draw calls.
267 A faster approach is to run both the bad and a good GL driver side-by-side.
268 The latter can be either a previously known good build of the GL driver, or a
269 reference software renderer.
271 This can be achieved with retracediff.py script, which invokes glretrace with
272 different environments, allowing to choose the desired GL driver by
273 manipulating variables such as `LD_LIBRARY_PATH` or `LIBGL_DRIVERS_DIR`.
277 ./scripts/retracediff.py \
278 --ref-env LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/path/to/reference/GL/implementation \
280 --diff-prefix=/path/to/output/diffs \
290 * [Official mailing list](http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/apitrace)
292 * [Zack Rusin's blog introducing the GUI](http://zrusin.blogspot.com/2011/04/apitrace.html)
294 * [Jose's Fonseca blog introducing the tool](http://jrfonseca.blogspot.com/2008/07/tracing-d3d-applications.html)
302 * [Proxy DLL](http://www.mikoweb.eu/index.php?node=21)
304 * [Intercept Calls to DirectX with a Proxy DLL](http://www.codeguru.com/cpp/g-m/directx/directx8/article.php/c11453/)
306 * [Direct3D 9 API Interceptor](http://graphics.stanford.edu/~mdfisher/D3D9Interceptor.html)
310 * [Microsoft PIX](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee417062.aspx)
312 * [D3DSpy](http://doc.51windows.net/Directx9_SDK/?url=/directx9_sdk/graphics/programmingguide/TutorialsAndSamplesAndToolsAndTips/Tools/D3DSpy.htm): the predecessor of PIX
314 * [AMD GPU PerfStudio](http://developer.amd.com/gpu/PerfStudio/pages/APITraceWindow.aspx)
322 * [BuGLe](http://www.opengl.org/sdk/tools/BuGLe/)
324 * [GLIntercept](http://code.google.com/p/glintercept/)
326 * [tracy](https://gitorious.org/tracy): OpenGL ES and OpenVG trace, retrace, and state inspection
330 * [gDEBugger](http://www.gremedy.com/products.php)
332 * [glslDevil](http://cumbia.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/glsldevil/index.html)
334 * [AMD GPU PerfStudio](http://developer.amd.com/gpu/PerfStudio/pages/APITraceWindow.aspx)