Code Profiling Utilities Manual

Converting Raw Data Files to DPI Files

HP Code Profiling Utilities Manual—542684-003

5-2

Prepare profmrg Input Files

The profmrg utility requires the following inputs:

•

Zero or more raw data files, generated by runs of instrumented code

•

Zero or more DPI files, created by previous runs of profmrg

The output of profmrg is a DPI file that combines the information from all the input files.

Although you normally use profmrg to combine new data and produce a new DPI file, it

can sometimes make sense to run profmrg with no input raw data files and no DPI

files, other than an existing DPI file that is also the output file. For example, the -dump

option, described in Run profmrg, produces a text dump of the input files.

If you are running profmrg solely to update or dump an existing DPI file, you need not

provide any other input.

For Code Coverage

The meaningfulness of the code coverage report depends on the consistency of the

SPI file, the DPI file, and the source files provided as input. Specifically, for the results

of a study to be meaningful, all inputs should reflect the same versions of the source

files. The profmrg utility performs no validation in this regard.

For additional usage considerations, see Section 10, Usage Considerations.

For Profile-Guided Optimization

To ensure that effective optimizations are performed during profile-guided optimization:

•

Make sure that the DPI file and the source files provided as input to the compiler

are consistent. Specifically, all inputs should reflect the same versions of the

source files. The profmrg utility performs no validations in this regard.

•

When you run the instrumented object file, make sure that the data you use

represents a typical workload.

For additional usage considerations, see Section 10, Usage Considerations

Assembling Raw Data Files

Names of raw data files have one of two possible forms:

•

ZZPF

if the file was created in the Guardian environment or if the file was created

in the OSS environment and the current directory is a Guardian subvolume

•

*.dyn if the file was created in the OSS environment and the current directory is an

OSS directory

As previously mentioned, you can run profmrg on either the Windows workstation or

the NonStop server. To use raw data files as input to profmrg on the workstation, you