[Python-Dev] s/hotshot/lsprof

[Armin Rigo]

Hi Martin,

On Mon, Nov 21, 2005 at 08:12:53AM +0100, "Martin v. L?wis" wrote:
> If bugs are in the heavily-used parts of the library, like regular
> expressions, it doesn't matter much if the original author goes
> away for some period of time - other contributors will fix the bugs
> that they care about, and not by rewriting the entire thing.

I see no incremental way of fixing some of the downsides of hotshot,
like its huge log file size and loading time.  I doubt people often find
the motivation to dig into this large orphaned piece of software.
Instead, they rewrite their own profilers, because writing a basic one
is not difficult.  It is much less difficult than, say, writing a basic
regular expression engine (but even the latter has gotten rewritten at
times) -- unless you want to go into the advanced corners mentioned by
Tim.

Some guys posted their 'lsprof' on SF because it was well-polished and
they found it useful, so here I am, arguing for a standard library
containing preferably simple pieces of code that work and are practical
for the common advertised use case.  I'm not even sure in this case why
we are arguing: the new piece of code's interface can be made 100%
compatible with the documented parts of the previous interface; the
previous module has been around for longer but so far it produced
half-meaningless numbers due to bugs.


A bientot,

Armin.