Eclipse Trace Compass 1.1.0 Release Review

Type
Release
State
Successful
End Date of the Review Period

Reviews run for a minimum of one week. The outcome of the review is decided on this date. This is the last day to make comments or ask questions about this review.

Project
Eclipse Trace Compass
Release

1.1.0

Description

Trace Compass 1.1 is a minor release that ships with the Mars.1 update release.

API Certification

The project leadership certifies that the APIs in this release are "Eclipse Quality".

Architectural Issues

No architectural changes for this release.

Security Issues

There are no security issues.

Non-Code Aspects

Trace Compass documentation is kept up-to-date for added and changed features. The developer and user guides are available as Eclipse help plug-ins and are part of the installable features. The latest released versions are also available on the Eclipse Foundation's web page.

User Guides

  • LTTng User Guide  (including generic framework features)
  • Pcap Network Analysis User Guide
  • GDBTrace Analysis User Guide
  • Trace Compass Product User Guide (RCP)

Developer Guide

  • Trace Compass Developer Guide
Usability Details
  • Trace Compass aims to conform to the Eclipse user interface guidelines.
  • The UI components support for keyboard navigation.
  • All of our strings are externalized but there are currently no language packs.
  • Trace Compass is designed to support large trace data that exceeds the available memory while providing a responsive UI.

We continuously work on improving the user experience. This 1.1 release provides user facing improvements, for example:

  • Events Table Enhancements
    • Support for hiding of columns
    • Copy to clipboard
    • Periodic update during scrollbar drag in Events Table
  • Support for compressed traces (GZIP)
  • Lost event handling improvement which helps user detecting time ranges where trace events were lost
End of Life

We have no end-of-life issues to discuss at this time.

Standards

Trace Compass comes with multipe built-in trace parsers for the following standard:

  • Common Trace Format (CTF)
    • Linux LTTng kernel traces
    • Linux LTTng-UST userspace traces which can come from proprietary software or open source eg. Mir, MariaDB, QEMU traces
    • Other traces in CTF, e.g. Linux Perf traces (CTF), Bare metal traces (CTF), Hardware traces (e.g. IEEE Nexus 5001 CTF conversion).
  • GDB traces for debugging
  • Best Trace Format for OSEK
  • The libpcap (PAcket CAPture) format, for network traces

Trace Compass provides a remote tracer control for LTTng Kernel and UST Tracers for configuring of trace sessions.

Communities
  • 6 active committers from 3 different organizations
  • Trace Compass can be setup using Oomph.  We hope this lowers the barrier-to-entry and stimulates the growth of our community.
  • User interaction via Bugzilla, IRC chat (#tracecompass) and mailing list (tracecompass-dev@eclipse.org)
  • Bugzilla is used for planning and bug tracking
  • Centralized update site and download page for the standalone RCP
  • Trace Compass is part of the PolarSys solutions
  • Strong relationship with the LTTng project. Project members interact with this community via mailing list (lttng-dev@lists.lttng.org)
  • Many interactions with the CDT project. One committer is also committer in CDT.
  • Trace Compass is the preferred Trace Analysis Tool for students as part of the trace research projects (see bullets below) with the Polytechnique Montreal university. Many enhancements for Trace Compass are an outcome of these reseach projects.