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.
22 Run the application you want to trace as
24 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 apitrace dump --color application.trace
34 Replay an OpenGL trace with
36 glretrace application.trace
38 Pass the `-sb` option to use a single buffered visual. Pass `--help` to
39 glretrace for more options.
43 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 ===========================
70 Several tools take `CALLSET` arguments, e.g:
72 apitrace dump --calls CALLSET foo.trace
73 glretrace -S CALLSET foo.trace
75 The call syntax is very flexible. Here are a few examples:
79 * `1,2,4,5` set of calls
81 * `"1 2 4 5"` set of calls (commas are optional and can be replaced with whitespace)
83 * `1-100/2` calls 1, 3, 5, ..., 99
85 * `1-1000/draw` all draw calls between 1 and 1000
87 * `1-1000/fbo` all fbo changes between calls 1 and 1000
89 * `frame` all calls at end of frames
91 * `@foo.txt` read call numbers from `foo.txt`, using the same syntax as above
100 Run the application you want to trace as
102 LD_PRELOAD=/path/to/apitrace/wrappers/glxtrace.so /path/to/application
104 and it will generate a trace named `application.trace` in the current
105 directory. You can specify the written trace filename by setting the
106 `TRACE_FILE` environment variable before running.
108 The `LD_PRELOAD` mechanism should work with most applications. There are some
109 applications, e.g., Unigine Heaven, which global function pointers with the
110 same name as GL entrypoints, living in a shared object that wasn't linked with
111 `-Bsymbolic` flag, so relocations to those globals function pointers get
112 overwritten with the address to our wrapper library, and the application will
113 segfault when trying to write to them. For these applications it is possible
114 to trace by using `glxtrace.so` as an ordinary `libGL.so` and injecting into
117 ln -s glxtrace.so wrappers/libGL.so
118 ln -s glxtrace.so wrappers/libGL.so.1
119 ln -s glxtrace.so wrappers/libGL.so.1.2
120 export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/path/to/apitrace/wrappers:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
121 export TRACE_LIBGL=/path/to/real/libGL.so.1
124 See the `ld.so` man page for more information about `LD_PRELOAD` and
125 `LD_LIBRARY_PATH` environment flags.
127 To trace the application inside gdb, invoke gdb as:
129 gdb --ex 'set exec-wrapper env LD_PRELOAD=/path/to/glxtrace.so' --args /path/to/application
133 Run the application you want to trace as
135 DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=/path/to/apitrace/wrappers /path/to/application
137 Note that although Mac OS X has an `LD_PRELOAD` equivalent,
138 `DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES`, it is mostly useless because it only works with
139 `DYLD_FORCE_FLAT_NAMESPACE=1` which breaks most applications. See the `dyld` man
140 page for more details about these environment flags.
143 Emitting annotations to the trace
144 ---------------------------------
146 From OpenGL applications you can embed annotations in the trace file through the
147 [`GL_GREMEDY_string_marker`](http://www.opengl.org/registry/specs/GREMEDY/string_marker.txt)
149 [`GL_GREMEDY_frame_terminator`](http://www.opengl.org/registry/specs/GREMEDY/frame_terminator.txt)
152 **apitrace** will advertise and intercept these GL extensions independently of
153 the GL implementation. So all you have to do is to use these extensions when
156 For example, if you use [GLEW](http://glew.sourceforge.net/) to dynamically
157 detect and use GL extensions, you could easily accomplish this by doing:
161 if (GLEW_GREMEDY_string_marker) {
162 glStringMarkerGREMEDY(0, __FUNCTION__ ": enter");
167 if (GLEW_GREMEDY_string_marker) {
168 glStringMarkerGREMEDY(0, __FUNCTION__ ": leave");
173 This has the added advantage of working equally well with gDEBugger.
176 From OpenGL ES applications you can embed annotations in the trace file through the
177 [`GL_EXT_debug_marker`](http://www.khronos.org/registry/gles/extensions/EXT/EXT_debug_marker.txt)
181 For Direct3D applications you can follow the same procedure used for
182 [instrumenting an application for PIX](http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/query/ee417250)
185 Dump GL state at a particular call
186 ----------------------------------
188 You can get a dump of the bound GL state at call 12345 by doing:
190 glretrace -D 12345 application.trace > 12345.json
192 This is precisely the mechanism the GUI obtains its own state.
194 You can compare two state dumps by doing:
196 apitrace diff-state 12345.json 67890.json
199 Comparing two traces side by side
200 ---------------------------------
202 apitrace diff trace1.trace trace2.trace
204 This works only on Unices, and it will truncate the traces due to performance
208 Recording a video with FFmpeg
209 -----------------------------
211 You can make a video of the output by doing
213 glretrace -s - application.trace \
214 | ffmpeg -r 30 -f image2pipe -vcodec ppm -i pipe: -vcodec mpeg4 -y output.mp4
220 You can make a smaller trace by doing:
222 apitrace trim --callset 100-1000 -o trimed.trace applicated.trace
224 If you need precise control over which calls to trim you can specify the
225 individual call numbers a plaintext file, as described in the 'Call sets'
229 Advanced usage for OpenGL implementors
230 ======================================
232 There are several advanced usage examples meant for OpenGL implementors.
238 These are the steps to create a regression test-suite around **apitrace**:
242 * obtain reference snapshots, by doing:
244 mkdir /path/to/snapshots/
245 glretrace -s /path/to/reference/snapshots/ application.trace
249 * prune the snapshots which are not interesting
251 * to do a regression test, do:
253 glretrace -c /path/to/reference/snapshots/ application.trace
255 Alternatively, for a HTML summary, use `apitrace diff-images`:
257 glretrace -s /path/to/current/snapshots/ application.trace
258 apitrace diff-images --output summary.html /path/to/reference/snapshots/ /path/to/current/snapshots/
261 Automated git-bisection
262 -----------------------
264 With tracecheck.py it is possible to automate git bisect and pinpoint the
265 commit responsible for a regression.
267 Below is an example of using tracecheck.py to bisect a regression in the
268 Mesa-based Intel 965 driver. But the procedure could be applied to any GL
269 driver hosted on a git repository.
271 First, create a build script, named build-script.sh, containing:
275 export PATH=/usr/lib/ccache:$PATH
278 ./autogen.sh --disable-egl --disable-gallium --disable-glut --disable-glu --disable-glw --with-dri-drivers=i965
282 It is important that builds are both robust, and efficient. Due to broken
283 dependency discovery in Mesa's makefile system, it was necessary invoke `make
284 clean` in every iteration step. `ccache` should be installed to avoid
285 recompiling unchanged source files.
290 export LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose
291 export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$PWD/lib
292 export LIBGL_DRIVERS_DIR=$PWD/lib
294 6491e9593d5cbc5644eb02593a2f562447efdcbb 71acbb54f49089b03d3498b6f88c1681d3f649ac \
295 -- src/mesa/drivers/dri/intel src/mesa/drivers/dri/i965/
296 git bisect run /path/to/tracecheck.py \
297 --precision-threshold 8.0 \
298 --build /path/to/build-script.sh \
299 --gl-renderer '.*Mesa.*Intel.*' \
300 --retrace=/path/to/glretrace \
301 -c /path/to/reference/snapshots/ \
302 topogun-1.06-orc-84k.trace
304 The trace-check.py script will skip automatically when there are build
307 The `--gl-renderer` option will also cause a commit to be skipped if the
308 `GL_RENDERER` is unexpected (e.g., when a software renderer or another GL
309 driver is unintentionally loaded due to missing symbol in the DRI driver, or
310 another runtime fault).
313 Side by side retracing
314 ----------------------
316 In order to determine which draw call a regression first manifests one could
317 generate snapshots for every draw call, using the `-S` option. That is, however,
318 very inefficient for big traces with many draw calls.
320 A faster approach is to run both the bad and a good GL driver side-by-side.
321 The latter can be either a previously known good build of the GL driver, or a
322 reference software renderer.
324 This can be achieved with retracediff.py script, which invokes glretrace with
325 different environments, allowing to choose the desired GL driver by
326 manipulating variables such as `LD_LIBRARY_PATH` or `LIBGL_DRIVERS_DIR`.
330 ./scripts/retracediff.py \
331 --ref-env LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/path/to/reference/GL/implementation \
333 --diff-prefix=/path/to/output/diffs \
343 * [Official mailing list](http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/apitrace)
345 * [Zack Rusin's blog introducing the GUI](http://zrusin.blogspot.com/2011/04/apitrace.html)
347 * [Jose's Fonseca blog introducing the tool](http://jrfonseca.blogspot.com/2008/07/tracing-d3d-applications.html)
355 * [Proxy DLL](http://www.mikoweb.eu/index.php?node=21)
357 * [Intercept Calls to DirectX with a Proxy DLL](http://www.codeguru.com/cpp/g-m/directx/directx8/article.php/c11453/)
359 * [Direct3D 9 API Interceptor](http://graphics.stanford.edu/~mdfisher/D3D9Interceptor.html)
363 * [Microsoft PIX](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee417062.aspx)
365 * [D3DSpy](http://doc.51windows.net/Directx9_SDK/?url=/directx9_sdk/graphics/programmingguide/TutorialsAndSamplesAndToolsAndTips/Tools/D3DSpy.htm): the predecessor of PIX
367 * [AMD GPU PerfStudio](http://developer.amd.com/gpu/PerfStudio/pages/APITraceWindow.aspx)
375 * [BuGLe](http://www.opengl.org/sdk/tools/BuGLe/)
377 * [GLIntercept](http://code.google.com/p/glintercept/)
379 * [tracy](https://gitorious.org/tracy): OpenGL ES and OpenVG trace, retrace, and state inspection
383 * [gDEBugger](http://www.gremedy.com/products.php)
385 * [glslDevil](http://cumbia.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/glsldevil/index.html)
387 * [AMD GPU PerfStudio](http://developer.amd.com/gpu/PerfStudio/pages/APITraceWindow.aspx)