Read your profiles!

I uploaded the first version of the hp2any core library that is capable of handling heap profiles both during and after execution. The essence of the interface is this group of functions:

type ProfileReader = IO Profile
type ProfileSink = SinkInput -> IO ()

readProfile :: FilePath -> IO Profile
profile :: CreateProcess -> IO (ProfileReader,ProcessHandle)
profileCallback :: CreateProcess -> ProfileSink -> IO ProcessHandle

The readProfile function can parse an .hp file from an earlier run and build an easy to query structure from it. The profile function takes a process to run and returns an IO action that lets the caller look at the snapshot of the profile at the given moment. For those who want to manage profiling data on their own, the profileCallback function is provided, which takes a callback function that’s called whenever some new piece of information is available. Its input has the following form:

data SinkInput = SinkSample Time ProfileSample
               | SinkId CostCentreId CostCentreName
               | SinkStop

There are three possibilities: a snapshot that lists active cost centres with their associated costs, an association between a numeric id (created by the library, used in the samples) and the name of the cost centre, and an indication that no more data should be expected. Note that SinkInput is an instance of Show, therefore print can be used as a callback function.

For the time being, the following functions are provided to query the Profile structure:

type CostCentreId = Int
type CostCentreName = String
type Time = Double
type Cost = Int
type ProfileSample = [(CostCentreId,Cost)]

costCentreName :: Profile -> CostCentreId -> Maybe CostCentreName
costCentreNames :: Profile -> [(CostCentreId,CostCentreName)]
toList :: Profile -> [(Time,ProfileSample)]
intervalToList :: Profile -> Time -> Time -> [(Time,ProfileSample)]
profileLength :: Profile -> Time

Caveat: it’s all preliminary and makes no attempt at being efficient, but it seems to work fine at first glance. Do play with it and shower me with your comments. :)