Profiling python C extensions

Question

I have developed a python C-extension that receives data from python and compute some cpu intensive calculations. It\'s possible to profile the C-extension?

The prob

Answer 1

I've found my way using google-perftools. The trick was to wrap the functions StartProfiler and StopProfiler in python (throught cython in my case).

To profile the C extension is sufficient to wrap the python code inside the StartProfiler and StopProfiler calls.

from google_perftools_wrapped import StartProfiler, StopProfiler
import c_extension # extension to profile c_extension.so

StartProfiler("output.prof")
... calling the interesting functions from the C extension module ...
StopProfiler()

Then to analyze for example you can export in callgrind format and see the result in kcachegrind:

pprof --callgrind c_extension.so output.prof > output.callgrind 
kcachegrind output.callgrind