Building OS X Flame Graphs and JITted JavaScript

You may have been impressed with the flamegraphs presented in a recent Netflix blog post. However, did you know you can create dynamic vizualizations like that with JavaScript? And with Node.js 0.12 knocking on the door, it’s a great time to look at added tooling support provided by the newer version of v8 that’s included.

The information regarding the JITted JavaScript that is emitted when specific flags are provided is a very important aspect. While Linux’s perf supports the processing of JIT information for a long time, authors of tools like thelldb and gdb debuggers are working hard to catch up and provide integration with this feature. However, that shouldn’t stop us from making use of it today in a plethora of environments.

In the talk below from the SF Node.js meetup, Thorsten Lorenz, Sr. Software Engineer at NodeSource, explains what and how JIT information is provided. He also introduces some in-browser tools that can be used to map assembly stacks back to JavaScript. If you’re interested in generating OS X flame graphs or Xcode stacktraces showing C++ and JavaScript, this is the talk for you!

About Thorsten Lorenz

Thorsten Lorenz is a Jazz musician turned developer. Initially he helped build front office trader applications for various investment banks. Then the Node.js bug bit. The fast turnaround from idea to working modules proved to be addictive and led to the creation of lots of modules which ended up on github and/or npm. Thorsten is convinced of the strong points of modular development enabled by Node.js and npm. He helped bring this approach to the browser by contributing to browserify and by creating related tools.

Looking for something else? Check out our full library of PubNub talks here.