[Python-ideas] setprofile and settrace inconsistency

[Alon Horev]

Hi,

When setting a trace function with settrace, the trace function when called
with a new scope can return another trace function or None, indicating the
inner scope should not be traced.
I used settrace for some time but calling the trace function for every line
of code is a performance killer.
So I moved on to setprofile, which calls a trace function every function
entry/exit. now here's the problem: the return value from the trace
function is ignored (intentionally), denying the possibility to skip
tracing of 'hot' or 'not interesting' code.

I would like to propose two alternatives:
1. setprofile will not ignore the return value and mimic settrace's
behavior.
2. setprofile is just a wrapper around settrace that limits
it's functionality, lets make settrace more flexible so setprofile will be
redundant. here's how: settrace will recieve an argument called 'events',
the trace function will fire only on events contained in that list. for
example: setprofile = partial(settrace, events=['call', 'return'])

I personally prefer the second.

Some context to this issue:
I'm building a python tracer - a logger that records each and every
function call. In order for it to run in production systems, the overhead
should be minimal. I would like to allow the user to say which
function/module/classes to trace or skip, for example: the user will skip
all math/cpu intensive operations. another example: the user will want to
trace his django app code but not the django framework.

your thoughts?

                  Thanks, Alon Horev
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-ideas/attachments/20120601/340cdd16/attachment.html>