[Python-Dev] DTRACE support

[Charles-François Natali]

> The main value of DTrace is systemwide observability. You can see
> something "strange" at kernel level and trace it to a particular line
> of code in a random Python script. There is no other tool that can do
> that. You have complete transversal observability of ALL the code
> running in your computer, kernel or usermode, clean reports with
> threads, etc.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying DTrace is useless.
I'm just saying that, as far as I'm concerned, I've never had any
trouble debugging/tunning a Python script with non-intrusive tools
(strace, gdb, valgrind, and oprofile for profiling). Of course, this
includes analysing bug reports.

> Maybe the biggest objection would be that most python-devs are running
> Linux, and you don't have dtrace support on linux unless you are
> running Oracle distribution. But world is larger than linux, and there
> are some efforts to port DTrace to Linux itself. DTrace is available
> on Solaris and derivatives, MacOS X and FreeBSD.

That's true, I might have a different opinion if I used Solaris. But
that's not the case, so te me, the cognitive overhead incurred by this
large patch isn't worth it.

So I'm -1, but that's a personal opinion :-)

cf