Thanks for the links. I haven't used these tools - are they useful? Which features are most helpful? Certainly we'll want to convert to or from some Linux trace format to combine traces that involve Linux and Mirage machines.
I've tried LTTng once, but it was quite complicated to set up, and required patching the kernel. It seems they improved that, it only needs a kernel module so I might give it another try.
I also used 'perf timechart'[0] in the past, or rather I tried to, but the traces on any realistic workload generated SVG files so large that it was too slow to open in firefox/inkscape etc.
Your approach seems to be more scalable as it doesn't generate one huge image/SVG but rather generates that zoomable view via Javascript on-the-fly, right?
I've used bootchart and had the same problem. You really need to generate the display dynamically to make the zooming work. Some other things my viewer does that don't work with static SVG:
- Show labels at a readable size, whatever the zoom.
- Keep labels within the screen bounds where possible rather than letting them scroll off.
- Fade out large-scale features (e.g. arrows spanning long time frames) when you get close, so they don't blot out everything in between.
- Project y values through tanh so you can see everything at once, but focus on the bit you're interested in.
Of course, there are other opportunities for adding interaction too.
