dotTrace: Who's calling my method?

Question

I'm using dotTrace to profile a compiler that's having some performance issues. Being a compiler, the call stack is heavily recursive, and folding in call tree view just tends to make things even more confusing more often than not.

When I sort the Plain List view by Own Time, I find that a certain method is using a large amount of the run time. Looking at the code, there isn't much I can do to make that method faster, but I believe that adding some memoization could make it so it doesn't need to be called nearly as often. The problem is, I'm having a heck of a time figuring out where to add it.

When you click on a method in the top pane in Plain List view, it shows methods that this method calls in the bottom pane, which is kind of useful, but as near as I can tell it doesn't give you the far more useful information of what methods are calling this method. Is there any way to get statistical information on that, so I know where to focus on adding memoization?

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered May 17 '16 at 10:35

4

In the plain list view of the All Calls tab just right click on your method and select Open Current Method Instance (or select the method and press CTRL+T). This opens a new tab for your method in dotTrace.

In this new tab click on the Backtrace view on the left side to see all calls to that method.

answered May 17 '16 at 10:35

bassfader

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Awesome, thanks! It shows that 96% of calls are coming from one specific place, so now I know where to focus on... – Mason Wheeler May 17 '16 at 10:51
After adding memoization, it decreased the runtime of the entire compile cycle by over 50%, so thanks again! – Mason Wheeler May 17 '16 at 14:29

dotTrace: Who's calling my method?

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