Xcode: Can the Time Profiler instrument show a complete function call sequence in the time order?

Question

Time Profiler seems to only show function calls sorted by their CPU time ranking. However, sometimes I'd like to see call sequence (multithreaded) during a particular run.

Do I need a custom instrument to achieve that instead?

I played around with the checkboxes that Time Profiler provided in its UI, but nothing helped. I had to resort to the good old logging, which is obviously inefficient.

Answer 1

It's a sampling profiler, so it only shows you the calls that were executing when it sampled; you can't see every call that happened over a period of time. That said, you can see the call-stack that leads up to every call, if you show the 'Extended Detail Pane' over on the right, which may give you a good idea what happened. See the Apple documentation.

As an alternative solution, see How to log all methods used in iOS app

Answer 2

There is a tool that analyses instruments trace files and does what you're describing at: http://timeanalyzer.excelsis.com

Currently, it only works on the main thread, and only for the first 30 seconds of profiling. It shows a function call stack waterfall: X axis is time, Y axis is the call stack.