[New-bugs-announce] [issue6696] Profile objects should be documented

[Alexander Myodov]

New submission from Alexander Myodov <amyodov at gmail.com>:

Seems like a minor documentation issue in 2.x became more significant 
one in 3.x.

In Python 2.6 (and lower), the documentation on Profile objects 
discussed them as a part of hotshot module, while omitting the fact 
that any profiler module, either of profile/cProfile/hotshot, supports 
them (though in fact, hotshot Profile objects have an api a bit 
different from profile/cProfile Profile objects). Note http://
docs.python.org/2.6/library/hotshot.html#profile-objects - there is no 
separate documentation of non-hotshot Profile objects, though they are 
largely similar. This is a minor issue which could probably be fixed in 
2.7 as a separate problem - otherwise it is pretty unclear from the 
documentation, what methods do cProfile Profile objects support (eg, 
they support enable()/disable() and runcall() methods, which is pretty 
useful for profiling, but impossible to find in documentation).

In Python 3.1, looks like everything related to hotshot was removed 
from the documents, including the documentation on Profile objects - 
which should not have been. This means, that now the documentation on 
profilers does not cover any Profile classes at all - see http://
docs.python.org/3.1/library/profile.html . For example, the official 
documentation doesn't say any way to profile a function passing 
arguments to it and receiving its result - while profile/cProfile 
Profile objects still do support runcall() method.

----------
assignee: georg.brandl
components: Documentation
messages: 91522
nosy: georg.brandl, honeyman
severity: normal
status: open
title: Profile objects should be documented
versions: Python 3.1

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue6696>
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