[erlang-questions] erlang:trace/3

Björn-Egil Dahlberg wallentin.dahlberg@REDACTED
Thu Apr 12 23:20:05 CEST 2012


Den 12 april 2012 19:39 skrev Emilio De Camargo Francesquini <
francesquini@REDACTED>:

> Hello again,
>
> I was playing around with dbg:p/2 and I realized that it does not
> accept the flag 'exiting'. I browsed the code a little bit and found
> out that it accepts only the flags declared in dbg:all/0. Here's the
> code:
>
> all() ->
>    [send,'receive',call,procs,garbage_collection,running,
>     set_on_spawn,set_on_first_spawn,set_on_link,set_on_first_link,
>     timestamp,arity,return_to].
>
> I took a brief look at the documentation, and found that "The list can
> also include any of the flags allowed in erlang:trace/3".
>
> Is this a bug or a deliberate decision?
>

I am not so sure that this is a deliberate decision .. in fact a believe
the opposite.

If I recall correctly, the 'exiting' option is newer tracing option (though
it apparently older than R13B03). I think it was added when some process
termination internals got rewritten. dbg were probably overlooked when
implementing it.

Does it work as intended for you if you add 'exiting' to all/0 in this case?

// Björn-Egil

>
> Thanks!
>
>
> Le 10 avril 2012 14:46, Björn-Egil Dahlberg <egil@REDACTED> a écrit :
> > On 2012-04-09 19:49, Emilio De Camargo Francesquini wrote:
> >>
> >> Hello,
> >>
> >> I'm having some trouble understanding the exact meaning of two of the
> >> flags for the erlang:trace/3 function.
> >>
> >> Flag:
> >>
> >> - running
> >>     Trace scheduling of processes.
> >>     Message tags: in, and out.
> >>
> >> I imagine that a message tagged "in" means that the process was chosen
> >> by a scheduler and will begin/resume execution and a tag "out" means
> >> that the processes has been preempted. Is that correct?
> >
> > Correct but, to be clear, not only preempted. The tag "out" will be sent
> if
> > the process is scheduled out for any reason.
> >
> >> - exiting
> >>     Trace scheduling of an exiting processes.
> >>     Message tags: in_exiting, out_exiting, and out_exited.
> >>
> >> I guess that these messages are sent when the proccess is about to
> >> exit or has already exited. Am I right? What is the exact difference
> >> between each one of them?
> >
> > With "in_exiting" and "out_exiting" the process is scheduled as normal
> but
> > it is in limbo. This means the process is dead but has to be scheduled in
> > order to terminate and cleanup internally in the runtime. In other
> words, it
> > will not execute beam-code any more just terminate. Why? It simplifies
> > things internally.
> >
> >> Moreover, what is the difference between "exiting" flag with the tag
> >> "out_exited" and "procs" flag with the tag "exit"?
> >
> > The tag "exit" from procs is sent when the process is deemed dead, i.e.
> it
> > is exiting. The last chunk of beam code the process executed was some
> form
> > of exit.  At this moment in time process has the state EXITING but will
> > potentially be scheduled again.
> >
> > The trace will after this be out_exited or, if more has to be done to
> > terminate it, out_exiting and in_exiting. Ex:
> >
> >
> > Eshell V5.9  (abort with ^G)
> > 1> P = spawn(fun() -> receive Ok -> ok end end).
> > <0.34.0>
> > 2> erlang:trace(P, true, [running, procs, exiting]).
> > 1
> > 3> P ! ok.
> > ok
> > 4> flush().
> > Shell got {trace,<0.34.0>,in,{erl_eval,receive_clauses,6}}
> > Shell got {trace,<0.34.0>,exit,normal}
> > Shell got {trace,<0.34.0>,out_exited,0}
> > ok
> >
> > I hope this clarifies things.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Björn-Egil
> > Erlang/OTP
> > _______________________________________________
> > erlang-questions mailing list
> > erlang-questions@REDACTED
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