xref: /netbsd-src/external/cddl/dtracetoolkit/dist/Perl/Readme (revision c29d51755812ace2e87aeefdb06cb2b4dac7087a)
1Perl - DTracing Perl
2
3   These scripts trace the Perl programming language, and require a version
4   of Perl to be built with the DTrace probes patch applied.
5
6   The Perl DTrace provider was originally written by Alan Burlison, and
7   later rewritten by Richard Dawe. These scripts were written and tested
8   with Richard's patch to perl, which can be found in the comments on
9   Alan's original blog entry,
10
11	http://blogs.sun.com/alanbur/entry/dtrace_and_perl
12
13   To get this and these scripts working, the rough steps are,
14
15	1. Download and extract perl 5.8.8 (www.cpan.org)
16	2. Download Richard's patch
17	3. Apply Richard's patch (gpatch -p1 -i patchfile)
18	4. sh Configure
19	5. make perldtrace.h
20	6. /usr/sbin/dtrace -h -s perldtrace.d -o perldtrace.h
21	7. make
22
23   If things go awry, you might find help by asking on the
24   dtrace-discuss@opensolaris.org mailing list.
25
26   Since the DTrace Perl provider may be developed further, there is a chance
27   that it has changed slightly by the time you are reading this, causing
28   these scripts to either break or behave oddly. Firstly, check for newer
29   versions of the DTraceToolkit; if it hasn't been updated and you need
30   to use these scripts immediately, then updating them shouldn't take
31   too long. The following was the state of the provider when these scripts
32   were written - check for changes and update the scripts accordingly,
33
34	provider perl {
35	    probe sub-entry(subroutine, file, lineno)
36	    probe sub-return(subroutine, file, lineno)
37	};
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39