gperftools/INSTALL

Installation Instructions
*************************

Copyright (C) 1994, 1995, 1996, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005 Free
Software Foundation, Inc.

This file is free documentation; the Free Software Foundation gives
unlimited permission to copy, distribute and modify it.


Perftools-Specific Install Notes
================================

*** NOTE FOR 64-BIT LINUX SYSTEMS

The glibc built-in stack-unwinder on 64-bit systems has some problems
with the perftools libraries.  (In particular, the cpu/heap profiler
may be in the middle of malloc, holding some malloc-related locks, when
they invoke the stack unwinder.  The built-in stack unwinder may call
malloc recursively, which may require the thread to acquire a lock it
already holds: deadlock.)

For that reason, if you use a 64-bit system, we strongly recommend you
install libunwind before trying to configure or install google
perftools.  libunwind can be found at

   http://download.savannah.nongnu.org/releases/libunwind/libunwind-snap-070410.tar.gz

Even if you already have libunwind installed, you will probably still
need to install from the snapshot to get the latest version.

CAUTION: if you install libunwind from the url above, be aware that
you may have trouble if you try to statically link your binary with
perftools: that is, if you link with 'gcc -static -lgcc_eh ...'.  This
is because both libunwind and libgcc implement the same C++ exception
handling APIs, but they implement them differently on some platforms.
This is not likely to be a problem on ia64, but may be on x86-64.
Using -static is rare, though, so unless you know this will affect you
it probably won't.

If you cannot or do not wish to install libunwind, you can still try
to use the built-in stack unwinder.  The built-in stack unwinder
requires that your application, the tcmalloc library, and system
libraries like libc, all be compiled with a frame pointer.  This is
*not* the default for x86-64.

If you are on x86-64 system, know that you have a set of system
libraries with frame-pointers enabled, and compile all your
applications with -fno-omit-frame-pointer, then you can enable the
built-in perftools stack unwinder by passing the
--enable-frame-pointers flag to configure.

Even with the use of libunwind, there are still known problems with
stack unwinding on 64-bit systems, particularly x86-64.  See the
"64-BIT ISSUES" section in README.


*** COMPILING ON NON-LINUX SYSTEMS

Perftools has been tested on the following systems:
   FreeBSD 6.0 (x86)
   Linux Fedora Core 3 (x86)
   Linux Fedora Core 4 (x86)
   Linux Fedora Core 5 (x86)
   Linux Fedora Core 6 (x86)
   Linux Ubuntu 6.06.1 (x86)
   Linux Ubuntu 6.06.1 (x86_64)
   Linux RedHat 9 (x86)
   Mac OS X 10.3.9 (Panther) (PowerPC)
   Mac OS X 10.4.8 (Tiger) (PowerPC)
   Mac OS X 10.4.8 (Tiger) (x86)
   Solaris 10 (x86)
   Windows XP, Visual Studio 2003 (VC++ 7) (x86)
   Windows XP, Visual Studio 2005 (VC++ 8) (x86)

It works in its full generality on all the Linux systems tested, both
x86 and x86_64 (though see 64-bit notes above).  There's also
preliminary support for ia64 architectures, though more remains to be
done there.

On other unix-based systems, most of perftools works.  The basic
memory-allocation library, tcmalloc_minimal, works on all systems.
The cpu-profiler also works widely.  The heap-profiler works on many
systems, but ONLY FOR SINGLE-THREADED PROGRAMS.  It also does not
profile mmap calls, which the linux version of the code does.  In both
cases, this is because the necessary system munging -- to find all
threads, to override the relevant syscalls -- has only been written
for Linux.

The last provided tool, the heap-checker, works only on Linux.  This
is again because the necessary system munging -- in this case, to find
all the memory-mapped regions owned by a process -- has only been
written for Linux.  You can still safely try to use the heap-checker,
it will just turn itself off and not do any leak-detection.

In all cases -- including for Windows -- the basic code that replaces
new/malloc works and is usable, by linking in either libtcmalloc or
libtcmalloc_minimal.

** FreeBSD:

   Everything should build successfully (creating
   libtcmalloc_minimal.so, libtcmalloc.so, and libprofile.so in the
   process):
      % ./configure
      % make
      % make check    # to run the tests
      % make install  # to install the libraries

   Most of the unittests should pass.  A few may fail:

   1) frag_unittest tries to allocate 400M of memory, and if you have
      less virtual memory on your system, the test may fail with a
      bad_alloc exception.

   2) profiler_unittest.sh sometimes fails in the "fork" test.  This
      is because stray SIGPROF signals from the parent process are
      making their way into the child process.  (This may be a kernel
      bug that only exists in older kernels.)  The profiling code
      itself is working fine.  This only affects programs that call
      fork(); for most programs, as long as the unittest makes it to
      the "fork" test, it indicates the cpu profiler is safe to use.

   3) heap-checker-death_unittest.sh will fail because the
      heap-checker does not successfully run on FreeBSD.  The
      leak-checker notices it cannot run and turns itself off; as a
      result, it does not die in the way the unittest is expecting,
      leading to test failure.  (Likewise, while
      heap-checker_unittest.sh succeeds, it doesn't actually test
      anything, since heap-checking is never actually enabled during
      those tests.)

   As a result, you can safely link any or all of libtcmalloc_minimal,
   libtcmalloc, or libprofiler into your application.  The following
   functionality is available:

   1) malloc/new replacement: by linking in libtcmalloc or
      libtcmalloc_minimal.
   2) heap-profiler: by linking in libtcmalloc and setting HEAPPROFILE.
   3) cpu-profiler: by linking in libprofile and setting CPUPROFILE.

   The following functionality is not available; if you try to enable
   it, it will turn itself off:

   1) heap-checker (automatic leak-detection): by linking in
      libtcmalloc and setting HEAPCHECK.

   See the README and documentation in the doc/ directory for more
   information on how to use these features.

   I have not tested other *BSD systems, but they are probably similar.

** Mac OS X:

   I've tested OS X 10.4 [Tiger] and OS X 10.3 [Panther] on both intel
   (x86) and PowerPC systems.  For Panther/ppc systems, perftools does
   not work at all: it depends on a header file, OSAtomic.h, which is
   new in 10.4.

   For the other three systems, all binaries and libraries build, and
   the set of unittests that pass are exactly the same as for FreeBSD.
   In particular, you can use the basic malloc/new replacements (by
   linking in libtcmalloc or libtcmalloc_minimal), the heap-profiler
   (by linking in libtcmalloc and setting HEAPPROFILE), 

** Solaris 10 x86:

   I've only tested using the GNU C++ compiler, not the Sun C++
   compiler.  Using g++ requires setting the PATH appropriately when
   configuring.  As another issue, Solaris 10 has a bug (see
   src/solaris/libstdc++.la for more info), which we work around by
   adding a custom LDFLAGS argument:

   % PATH=${PATH}:/usr/sfw/bin/:/usr/ccs/bin ./configure LDFLAGS="-Lsrc/solaris -lrt -lnsl"
   % PATH=${PATH}:/usr/sfw/bin/:/usr/ccs/bin make

   Again, all binaries and libraries successfully build.  However,
   while libprofiler.so can be used to generate CPU profiles, pprof is
   not very successful at reading them -- necessary helper programs
   like nm don't seem to be installed by default on Solaris, or
   perhaps are only installed as part of the Sun C++ compiler package.
   Even more trouble exists trying to generate heap-profiles, because
   the Sun linker does not support __attribute__((section)).  I've
   been unable to test this, but it might work correctly if you can
   get gcc to use the gnu linker (/usr/sfw/bin/gld) instead of sun's
   ld.

   The perftools code uses a lot of gcc-specific functionality,
   including attributes like section-naming and weak-linking, so it
   may be difficult to fully port this code to the Sun C++ compiler.
   The basic tcmalloc_minimal library may port well, however.

** Windows:

   Work on Windows is rather preliminary: we have to #define a special
   symbol that turns off the stacktrace functionality, since that is
   not yet implemented (see TODOs in src/windows/port.cc if you're
   interested in playing around with this).  But as in other ports,
   the basic tcmalloc library functionality, overriding malloc and new
   and such, is working fine, both with VC++ 7.1 (Visual Studio 2003)
   and VC++ 8.0 (Visual Studio 2005).  See README.windows for
   instructions on how to install on Windows.


*** FURTHER OPTIONAL TESTING

  In addition to all the tests that tcmalloc performs with "make
  check", for your convenience we've included part a test suite that
  comes with ptmalloc, another malloc implementation.  It is not
  enabled by default, because the tests do not compile on all systems.
  If you want to run these tests, you can try the following:

      % make ptmalloc_unittest1 ptmalloc_unittest2
      % ./ptmalloc_unittest1    # to run the test
      % ./ptmalloc_unittest2    # to run the test


Basic Installation
==================

These are generic installation instructions.

   The `configure' shell script attempts to guess correct values for
various system-dependent variables used during compilation.  It uses
those values to create a `Makefile' in each directory of the package.
It may also create one or more `.h' files containing system-dependent
definitions.  Finally, it creates a shell script `config.status' that
you can run in the future to recreate the current configuration, and a
file `config.log' containing compiler output (useful mainly for
debugging `configure').

   It can also use an optional file (typically called `config.cache'
and enabled with `--cache-file=config.cache' or simply `-C') that saves
the results of its tests to speed up reconfiguring.  (Caching is
disabled by default to prevent problems with accidental use of stale
cache files.)

   If you need to do unusual things to compile the package, please try
to figure out how `configure' could check whether to do them, and mail
diffs or instructions to the address given in the `README' so they can
be considered for the next release.  If you are using the cache, and at
some point `config.cache' contains results you don't want to keep, you
may remove or edit it.

   The file `configure.ac' (or `configure.in') is used to create
`configure' by a program called `autoconf'.  You only need
`configure.ac' if you want to change it or regenerate `configure' using
a newer version of `autoconf'.

The simplest way to compile this package is:

  1. `cd' to the directory containing the package's source code and type
     `./configure' to configure the package for your system.  If you're
     using `csh' on an old version of System V, you might need to type
     `sh ./configure' instead to prevent `csh' from trying to execute
     `configure' itself.

     Running `configure' takes awhile.  While running, it prints some
     messages telling which features it is checking for.

  2. Type `make' to compile the package.

  3. Optionally, type `make check' to run any self-tests that come with
     the package.

  4. Type `make install' to install the programs and any data files and
     documentation.

  5. You can remove the program binaries and object files from the
     source code directory by typing `make clean'.  To also remove the
     files that `configure' created (so you can compile the package for
     a different kind of computer), type `make distclean'.  There is
     also a `make maintainer-clean' target, but that is intended mainly
     for the package's developers.  If you use it, you may have to get
     all sorts of other programs in order to regenerate files that came
     with the distribution.

Compilers and Options
=====================

Some systems require unusual options for compilation or linking that the
`configure' script does not know about.  Run `./configure --help' for
details on some of the pertinent environment variables.

   You can give `configure' initial values for configuration parameters
by setting variables in the command line or in the environment.  Here
is an example:

     ./configure CC=c89 CFLAGS=-O2 LIBS=-lposix

   *Note Defining Variables::, for more details.

Compiling For Multiple Architectures
====================================

You can compile the package for more than one kind of computer at the
same time, by placing the object files for each architecture in their
own directory.  To do this, you must use a version of `make' that
supports the `VPATH' variable, such as GNU `make'.  `cd' to the
directory where you want the object files and executables to go and run
the `configure' script.  `configure' automatically checks for the
source code in the directory that `configure' is in and in `..'.

   If you have to use a `make' that does not support the `VPATH'
variable, you have to compile the package for one architecture at a
time in the source code directory.  After you have installed the
package for one architecture, use `make distclean' before reconfiguring
for another architecture.

Installation Names
==================

By default, `make install' installs the package's commands under
`/usr/local/bin', include files under `/usr/local/include', etc.  You
can specify an installation prefix other than `/usr/local' by giving
`configure' the option `--prefix=PREFIX'.

   You can specify separate installation prefixes for
architecture-specific files and architecture-independent files.  If you
pass the option `--exec-prefix=PREFIX' to `configure', the package uses
PREFIX as the prefix for installing programs and libraries.
Documentation and other data files still use the regular prefix.

   In addition, if you use an unusual directory layout you can give
options like `--bindir=DIR' to specify different values for particular
kinds of files.  Run `configure --help' for a list of the directories
you can set and what kinds of files go in them.

   If the package supports it, you can cause programs to be installed
with an extra prefix or suffix on their names by giving `configure' the
option `--program-prefix=PREFIX' or `--program-suffix=SUFFIX'.

Optional Features
=================

Some packages pay attention to `--enable-FEATURE' options to
`configure', where FEATURE indicates an optional part of the package.
They may also pay attention to `--with-PACKAGE' options, where PACKAGE
is something like `gnu-as' or `x' (for the X Window System).  The
`README' should mention any `--enable-' and `--with-' options that the
package recognizes.

   For packages that use the X Window System, `configure' can usually
find the X include and library files automatically, but if it doesn't,
you can use the `configure' options `--x-includes=DIR' and
`--x-libraries=DIR' to specify their locations.

Specifying the System Type
==========================

There may be some features `configure' cannot figure out automatically,
but needs to determine by the type of machine the package will run on.
Usually, assuming the package is built to be run on the _same_
architectures, `configure' can figure that out, but if it prints a
message saying it cannot guess the machine type, give it the
`--build=TYPE' option.  TYPE can either be a short name for the system
type, such as `sun4', or a canonical name which has the form:

     CPU-COMPANY-SYSTEM

where SYSTEM can have one of these forms:

     OS KERNEL-OS

   See the file `config.sub' for the possible values of each field.  If
`config.sub' isn't included in this package, then this package doesn't
need to know the machine type.

   If you are _building_ compiler tools for cross-compiling, you should
use the option `--target=TYPE' to select the type of system they will
produce code for.

   If you want to _use_ a cross compiler, that generates code for a
platform different from the build platform, you should specify the
"host" platform (i.e., that on which the generated programs will
eventually be run) with `--host=TYPE'.

Sharing Defaults
================

If you want to set default values for `configure' scripts to share, you
can create a site shell script called `config.site' that gives default
values for variables like `CC', `cache_file', and `prefix'.
`configure' looks for `PREFIX/share/config.site' if it exists, then
`PREFIX/etc/config.site' if it exists.  Or, you can set the
`CONFIG_SITE' environment variable to the location of the site script.
A warning: not all `configure' scripts look for a site script.

Defining Variables
==================

Variables not defined in a site shell script can be set in the
environment passed to `configure'.  However, some packages may run
configure again during the build, and the customized values of these
variables may be lost.  In order to avoid this problem, you should set
them in the `configure' command line, using `VAR=value'.  For example:

     ./configure CC=/usr/local2/bin/gcc

causes the specified `gcc' to be used as the C compiler (unless it is
overridden in the site shell script).  Here is a another example:

     /bin/bash ./configure CONFIG_SHELL=/bin/bash

Here the `CONFIG_SHELL=/bin/bash' operand causes subsequent
configuration-related scripts to be executed by `/bin/bash'.

`configure' Invocation
======================

`configure' recognizes the following options to control how it operates.

`--help'
`-h'
     Print a summary of the options to `configure', and exit.

`--version'
`-V'
     Print the version of Autoconf used to generate the `configure'
     script, and exit.

`--cache-file=FILE'
     Enable the cache: use and save the results of the tests in FILE,
     traditionally `config.cache'.  FILE defaults to `/dev/null' to
     disable caching.

`--config-cache'
`-C'
     Alias for `--cache-file=config.cache'.

`--quiet'
`--silent'
`-q'
     Do not print messages saying which checks are being made.  To
     suppress all normal output, redirect it to `/dev/null' (any error
     messages will still be shown).

`--srcdir=DIR'
     Look for the package's source code in directory DIR.  Usually
     `configure' can determine that directory automatically.

`configure' also accepts some other, not widely useful, options.  Run
`configure --help' for more details.