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Here is a recent comment from Dropbox engineers about the state of tracing tooling on Linux compared to Windows: https://dropbox.tech/infrastructure/boosting-dr

by hs86 5y ago

Here is a recent comment from Dropbox engineers about the state of tracing tooling on Linux compared to Windows: https://dropbox.tech/infrastructure/boosting-dropbox-upload-speed#debugging-with-microsoft https://dropbox.tech/infrastructure/boosting-dropbox-upload-... Is their assessment correct? If so, how comes that we got DTrace in 2019 and now eBPF ported to Windows? Are they trying to consolidate all tooling into one platform?

muststopmyths 5y ago
ETW (What netsh trace in the post uses underneath) has been around for 20+ years in Windows and is extremely powerful. However, Microsoft has always neglected the usability side of it. It's a bitch to set up and hard to interpret. Documentation is there, but scattered and hard to find easily. Most people here have probably seen Bruce Dawson's performance analysis and debugging posts. WPA/WPR are probably the only user-friendly (ish) ETW applications and even those are not that easy to use. So yeah, Windows has had powerful tracing and inspection tools for a while, but few people know how to use them well. As far as why they are doing DTrace and eBPF, I think both of those fill some holes that ETW doesn't. Mainly dynamic tracing and instrumentation, but I am sure there are other advantages I am not thinking of as well. They could have come up with another hopelessly complicated Microsoftie framework to do the same things, but it's probably a good thing that they didn't.
- sanxiyn 5y ago
  ETW is the topic of the post titled "The Worst API Ever Made" and the title is well deserved. If ETW tooling is lacking, it's because API is so terrible nobody wants to write tooling. https://caseymuratori.com/blog_0025 https://caseymuratori.com/blog_0025
  - malkia 5y ago
    There are some good articles in here (recently added) - https://devblogs.microsoft.com/performance-diagnostics/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/performance-diagnostics/ - but @randomascii's stuff was priceless (I'm still using UIforETW as it's friendliest little ui to setup xperf). I'm still struggling with WPA though (from loading/waiting to load symbols, to sometimes getting right there lost - but often it's helpful). Visual Studio's own Performance Profiler (Alt+F2, Ctrl+Alt+F2) also uses ETW - just more streamlined, better UI - but once it collects a bit too much data, it just can't handle it.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
garaetjjte 5y ago
>This was an eye-opening experience for us. We saw how far behind Linux is on the tracing tooling side. Yet, in a typical Microsoft way, if you want to use that Message Analyzer tool now: >Microsoft Message Analyzer (MMA) is being retired and its download packages removed from microsoft.com sites on November 25 2019. There is currently no Microsoft replacement for Microsoft Message Analyzer in development at this time.

by hs86 5y ago

muststopmyths 5y ago

ETW (What netsh trace in the post uses underneath) has been around for 20+ years in Windows and is extremely powerful. However, Microsoft has always neglected the usability side of it. It's a bitch to set up and hard to interpret. Documentation is there, but scattered and hard to find easily. Most people here have probably seen Bruce Dawson's performance analysis and debugging posts. WPA/WPR are probably the only user-friendly (ish) ETW applications and even those are not that easy to use. So yeah, Windows has had powerful tracing and inspection tools for a while, but few people know how to use them well. As far as why they are doing DTrace and eBPF, I think both of those fill some holes that ETW doesn't. Mainly dynamic tracing and instrumentation, but I am sure there are other advantages I am not thinking of as well. They could have come up with another hopelessly complicated Microsoftie framework to do the same things, but it's probably a good thing that they didn't.

sanxiyn 5y ago
ETW is the topic of the post titled "The Worst API Ever Made" and the title is well deserved. If ETW tooling is lacking, it's because API is so terrible nobody wants to write tooling. https://caseymuratori.com/blog_0025 https://caseymuratori.com/blog_0025
- malkia 5y ago
  There are some good articles in here (recently added) - https://devblogs.microsoft.com/performance-diagnostics/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/performance-diagnostics/ - but @randomascii's stuff was priceless (I'm still using UIforETW as it's friendliest little ui to setup xperf). I'm still struggling with WPA though (from loading/waiting to load symbols, to sometimes getting right there lost - but often it's helpful). Visual Studio's own Performance Profiler (Alt+F2, Ctrl+Alt+F2) also uses ETW - just more streamlined, better UI - but once it collects a bit too much data, it just can't handle it.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

garaetjjte 5y ago

>This was an eye-opening experience for us. We saw how far behind Linux is on the tracing tooling side. Yet, in a typical Microsoft way, if you want to use that Message Analyzer tool now: >Microsoft Message Analyzer (MMA) is being retired and its download packages removed from microsoft.com sites on November 25 2019. There is currently no Microsoft replacement for Microsoft Message Analyzer in development at this time.