atrace_helper is an optional binary which can be pushed onto the device running systrace in order to enrich the traces with further details (memory, I/O, etc).

Which problem is it solving?

Some nice-to-have details are not present in the systrace, specifically:

• Memory snapshots of running processes (PSS/RSS).
• Periodic snapshotting of processes and thread names.
• File paths for filesystem events (today they report only inode numbers).

How is it solving it?

atrace_helper is a small userspace binary which is meant to be pushed on the device and run together with atrace by a dedicated tracing agent. When stopped, the helper produces a JSON file which contains all the relevant details (see --help). The JSON file is consumed by the TraceViewer importers and the extra details are merged into the final model.

Build instructions

Building the binary requires the Android NDK to be installed. See Android NDK page. Once installed the binary can be just built as follows: $(NDK_HOME)/ndk-build The binary will be built in libs/armeabi-v7a/