How to remove Profiling *.gcda:Cannot open errors with python virtualenv builder?

Question

In jenkins output I am getting the following errors. Is this a problem or can it be silenced?

profiling:/opt/Python-3.6.1/Python/structmember.gc         


        

Answer 1

The gcda files are gcc profiling records, which are used for seeing which functions the CPU spent most of its time in. This tells you where you can get the most bang for your buck, when optimising the code.

You can retain the Python code opinisations, but not have the profiling, by using the configuration options --enable-optimizations --disable-profiling. Well, worked for me.

As the configure script will tell you, if you do not have the --enable-optimizations you will lose out on the best performance.

You are probably getting gcda files because you interrupted the Python build part-way through. When you run with --enable-optimizations the Python build run in three phases

• Builds the code
• Runs all the test modules to profile the code
• Re-compiles the code to optimise it based on the profiling

It pretty common to think the test phase is just to check the code is working correctly, as this is what it looks like it is doing, but be patient and leave it and it will compile again, the second time omitting the profiling.

So, its better to compile with --enable-optimizations and without --disable-profiling and just wait, as you should get better code that way.