Profiling Under Windows

MSVC++ provides three programs to use together to profile under Windows, prep, profile, and plist. The MSDN site summarizes how to use profile, prep, and plist.

A sample session for a program goes as follows.

• Tell the compiler to create code which can be profiled by going into project settings and choosing Debug Mode with Link settings to generate profile info and, I think, generate a mapfile. Compile the code.
• CD on the prompt into the same directory as the executable (and now profiling info). Type "prep /OM /FT ddtest".
• Then type "profile ddtest". It has to run to completion.
• Combine profile output data into a single (binary) data file. A sample is "prep /IT ddtest.pbt /io ddtest.pbo /ot ddtest.pbt".
• Lastly translate binary files into a text file. "plist /st ddtest.pbt > ddtest.txt".

You can also create a windows icon which you can click to profile your code. There is another msdn article on this.

Remote Debugging

In order to do remote debugging with MSVC++ 6.0 on Win2k, you need to copy the following to Windows System\System32 from Visual Studio\Common\MSDev98\Bin: TLNOT.DLL, DM.DLL MSDIS110.DLL and maybe MSPDB60.DLL.

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Questions or comments? Contact Drew Dolgert.