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.
18 Run the application you want to trace as
20 apitrace trace --api API /path/to/application [args...]
22 and it will generate a trace named `application.trace` in the current
23 directory. You can specify the written trace filename by passing the
24 `--output` command line option.
28 apitrace dump application.trace
30 Replay an OpenGL trace with
32 glretrace application.trace
34 Pass the `-sb` option to use a single buffered visual. Pass `--help` to
35 glretrace for more options.
39 qapitrace application.trace
42 Advanced command line usage
43 ===========================
49 Several tools take `CALLSET` arguments, e.g:
51 apitrace dump --calls CALLSET foo.trace
52 glretrace -S CALLSET foo.trace
54 The call syntax is very flexible. Here are a few examples:
58 * `1,2,4,5` set of calls
60 * `"1 2 4 5"` set of calls (commas are optional and can be replaced with whitespace)
62 * `1-100/2` calls 1, 3, 5, ..., 99
64 * `1-1000/draw` all draw calls between 1 and 1000
66 * `1-1000/fbo` all fbo changes between calls 1 and 1000
68 * `frame` all calls at end of frames
70 * `@foo.txt` read call numbers from `foo.txt`, using the same syntax as above
79 Run the application you want to trace as
81 LD_PRELOAD=/path/to/apitrace/wrappers/glxtrace.so /path/to/application
83 and it will generate a trace named `application.trace` in the current
84 directory. You can specify the written trace filename by setting the
85 `TRACE_FILE` environment variable before running.
87 The `LD_PRELOAD` mechanism should work with most applications. There are some
88 applications, e.g., Unigine Heaven, which global function pointers with the
89 same name as GL entrypoints, living in a shared object that wasn't linked with
90 `-Bsymbolic` flag, so relocations to those globals function pointers get
91 overwritten with the address to our wrapper library, and the application will
92 segfault when trying to write to them. For these applications it is possible
93 to trace by using `glxtrace.so` as an ordinary `libGL.so` and injecting into
96 ln -s glxtrace.so wrappers/libGL.so
97 ln -s glxtrace.so wrappers/libGL.so.1
98 ln -s glxtrace.so wrappers/libGL.so.1.2
99 export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/path/to/apitrace/wrappers:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
100 export TRACE_LIBGL=/path/to/real/libGL.so.1
103 See the `ld.so` man page for more information about `LD_PRELOAD` and
104 `LD_LIBRARY_PATH` environment flags.
106 To trace the application inside gdb, invoke gdb as:
108 gdb --ex 'set exec-wrapper env LD_PRELOAD=/path/to/glxtrace.so' --args /path/to/application
112 Run the application you want to trace as
114 DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=/path/to/apitrace/wrappers /path/to/application
116 Note that although Mac OS X has an `LD_PRELOAD` equivalent,
117 `DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES`, it is mostly useless because it only works with
118 `DYLD_FORCE_FLAT_NAMESPACE=1` which breaks most applications. See the `dyld` man
119 page for more details about these environment flags.
123 Copy `opengl32.dll`, `d3d8.dll`, or `d3d9.dll` from the wrappers directory
124 to the directory with the application you want to trace. Then run the
127 You can specify the written trace filename by setting the `TRACE_FILE`
128 environment variable before running.
131 Emitting annotations to the trace
132 ---------------------------------
134 From OpenGL applications you can embed annotations in the trace file through the
135 [`GL_GREMEDY_string_marker`](http://www.opengl.org/registry/specs/GREMEDY/string_marker.txt)
137 [`GL_GREMEDY_frame_terminator`](http://www.opengl.org/registry/specs/GREMEDY/frame_terminator.txt)
140 **apitrace** will advertise and intercept these GL extensions independently of
141 the GL implementation. So all you have to do is to use these extensions when
144 For example, if you use [GLEW](http://glew.sourceforge.net/) to dynamically
145 detect and use GL extensions, you could easily accomplish this by doing:
149 if (GLEW_GREMEDY_string_marker) {
150 glStringMarkerGREMEDY(0, __FUNCTION__ ": enter");
155 if (GLEW_GREMEDY_string_marker) {
156 glStringMarkerGREMEDY(0, __FUNCTION__ ": leave");
161 This has the added advantage of working equally well with gDEBugger.
164 From OpenGL ES applications you can embed annotations in the trace file through the
165 [`GL_EXT_debug_marker`](http://www.khronos.org/registry/gles/extensions/EXT/EXT_debug_marker.txt)
169 For Direct3D applications you can follow the same procedure used for
170 [instrumenting an application for PIX](http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/query/ee417250)
173 Dump GL state at a particular call
174 ----------------------------------
176 You can get a dump of the bound GL state at call 12345 by doing:
178 glretrace -D 12345 application.trace > 12345.json
180 This is precisely the mechanism the GUI obtains its own state.
182 You can compare two state dumps by doing:
184 apitrace diff-state 12345.json 67890.json
187 Comparing two traces side by side
188 ---------------------------------
190 apitrace diff trace1.trace trace2.trace
192 This works only on Unices, and it will truncate the traces due to performance
196 Recording a video with FFmpeg
197 -----------------------------
199 You can make a video of the output by doing
201 glretrace -s - application.trace \
202 | ffmpeg -r 30 -f image2pipe -vcodec ppm -i pipe: -vcodec mpeg4 -y output.mp4
208 You can make a smaller trace by doing:
210 apitrace trim --callset 100-1000 -o trimed.trace applicated.trace
212 If you need precise control over which calls to trim you can specify the
213 individual call numbers a plaintext file, as described in the 'Call sets'
217 Advanced usage for OpenGL implementors
218 ======================================
220 There are several advanced usage examples meant for OpenGL implementors.
226 These are the steps to create a regression test-suite around **apitrace**:
230 * obtain reference snapshots, by doing:
232 mkdir /path/to/snapshots/
233 glretrace -s /path/to/reference/snapshots/ application.trace
237 * prune the snapshots which are not interesting
239 * to do a regression test, do:
241 glretrace -c /path/to/reference/snapshots/ application.trace
243 Alternatively, for a HTML summary, use `apitrace diff-images`:
245 glretrace -s /path/to/current/snapshots/ application.trace
246 apitrace diff-images --output summary.html /path/to/reference/snapshots/ /path/to/current/snapshots/
249 Automated git-bisection
250 -----------------------
252 With tracecheck.py it is possible to automate git bisect and pinpoint the
253 commit responsible for a regression.
255 Below is an example of using tracecheck.py to bisect a regression in the
256 Mesa-based Intel 965 driver. But the procedure could be applied to any GL
257 driver hosted on a git repository.
259 First, create a build script, named build-script.sh, containing:
263 export PATH=/usr/lib/ccache:$PATH
266 ./autogen.sh --disable-egl --disable-gallium --disable-glut --disable-glu --disable-glw --with-dri-drivers=i965
270 It is important that builds are both robust, and efficient. Due to broken
271 dependency discovery in Mesa's makefile system, it was necessary invoke `make
272 clean` in every iteration step. `ccache` should be installed to avoid
273 recompiling unchanged source files.
278 export LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose
279 export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$PWD/lib
280 export LIBGL_DRIVERS_DIR=$PWD/lib
282 6491e9593d5cbc5644eb02593a2f562447efdcbb 71acbb54f49089b03d3498b6f88c1681d3f649ac \
283 -- src/mesa/drivers/dri/intel src/mesa/drivers/dri/i965/
284 git bisect run /path/to/tracecheck.py \
285 --precision-threshold 8.0 \
286 --build /path/to/build-script.sh \
287 --gl-renderer '.*Mesa.*Intel.*' \
288 --retrace=/path/to/glretrace \
289 -c /path/to/reference/snapshots/ \
290 topogun-1.06-orc-84k.trace
292 The trace-check.py script will skip automatically when there are build
295 The `--gl-renderer` option will also cause a commit to be skipped if the
296 `GL_RENDERER` is unexpected (e.g., when a software renderer or another GL
297 driver is unintentionally loaded due to missing symbol in the DRI driver, or
298 another runtime fault).
301 Side by side retracing
302 ----------------------
304 In order to determine which draw call a regression first manifests one could
305 generate snapshots for every draw call, using the `-S` option. That is, however,
306 very inefficient for big traces with many draw calls.
308 A faster approach is to run both the bad and a good GL driver side-by-side.
309 The latter can be either a previously known good build of the GL driver, or a
310 reference software renderer.
312 This can be achieved with retracediff.py script, which invokes glretrace with
313 different environments, allowing to choose the desired GL driver by
314 manipulating variables such as `LD_LIBRARY_PATH` or `LIBGL_DRIVERS_DIR`.
318 ./scripts/retracediff.py \
319 --ref-env LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/path/to/reference/GL/implementation \
321 --diff-prefix=/path/to/output/diffs \
331 * [Official mailing list](http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/apitrace)
333 * [Zack Rusin's blog introducing the GUI](http://zrusin.blogspot.com/2011/04/apitrace.html)
335 * [Jose's Fonseca blog introducing the tool](http://jrfonseca.blogspot.com/2008/07/tracing-d3d-applications.html)
343 * [Proxy DLL](http://www.mikoweb.eu/index.php?node=21)
345 * [Intercept Calls to DirectX with a Proxy DLL](http://www.codeguru.com/cpp/g-m/directx/directx8/article.php/c11453/)
347 * [Direct3D 9 API Interceptor](http://graphics.stanford.edu/~mdfisher/D3D9Interceptor.html)
351 * [Microsoft PIX](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee417062.aspx)
353 * [D3DSpy](http://doc.51windows.net/Directx9_SDK/?url=/directx9_sdk/graphics/programmingguide/TutorialsAndSamplesAndToolsAndTips/Tools/D3DSpy.htm): the predecessor of PIX
355 * [AMD GPU PerfStudio](http://developer.amd.com/gpu/PerfStudio/pages/APITraceWindow.aspx)
363 * [BuGLe](http://www.opengl.org/sdk/tools/BuGLe/)
365 * [GLIntercept](http://code.google.com/p/glintercept/)
367 * [tracy](https://gitorious.org/tracy): OpenGL ES and OpenVG trace, retrace, and state inspection
371 * [gDEBugger](http://www.gremedy.com/products.php)
373 * [glslDevil](http://cumbia.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/glsldevil/index.html)
375 * [AMD GPU PerfStudio](http://developer.amd.com/gpu/PerfStudio/pages/APITraceWindow.aspx)