memtrace

A streaming client for OCaml's Memprof, which generates compact traces of a program's memory use.

To profile the memory use of a program, start by putting this line somewhere at the program startup:

Memtrace.trace_if_requested ~context:"my program" ();;

If the MEMTRACE environment variable is present, tracing begins to the filename it specifies. (If it's absent, nothing happens)

The ~context parameter is optional, and can be set to any string that helps to identify the trace file.

If the program daemonises, the call to trace_if_requested should occur after the program forks, to ensure the right process is traced.

The resulting trace files can be analysed with some simple command-line tools in bin/, but the recommended interface is the memtrace viewer, which lives at:

https://github.com/janestreet/memtrace_viewer