OxCaml | Miscellaneous extensions

Tracing OCaml native programs in user-space

Tracing probes can be defined using OCaml’s extension point syntax as follows:

[%probe <name> <handler>]

where <name> is a string literal without spaces or special characters and <handler> is an arbitrary OCaml expression of type unit.

For example:

let foo x y =
    [%probe "my_first_probe" (myprint "from foo" x y)]
      bar x y

By default, all probes are disabled when the program starts. A disabled probe does not do anything and does not cost almost anything at runtime, and in particular, the handler is not evaluated.

If a probe is enabled, whenever the execution reaches it, the corresponding handler is evaluated.

A probe can be enabled and disabled during program execution using ocaml-probes tool and library.

See ocaml-probes documentation or details

Topics

Tracing OCaml native programs in user-space