Recommendations for C Profilers?

Question

Everyone always says to profile your program before performing optimizations but no-one ever describes how to do so.

What are your practices for profiling C code?

Answer 1

If you are using Linux, then I recommend the combination of ValGrind and CallGrind and KCacheGrind. ValGrind is a superb method for finding memory leaks, and the CallGrind extension makes for a good profiler.

NOTE: I just learned that ValGrind now also works on Mac OSX. However, CallGrind and KCacheGrind haven't been updated since 2005. You might want to look at other front-ends.