Late Night Cocoa: DTrace

Last week I recorded an episode of Late Night Cocoa with Scotty in which I discuss DTrace (why it was created & how it works) and reveal the origin of the name "Cocoa Samurai", you can listen to it here: http://www.mac-developer-network.com/podcasts/lnc/lnc038/ I realize listing to my conversation I left 1 big thing hanging. Mainly I mentioned that it'd be great if the OmniGroup had DTrace probes in their apps (they do, not USDT's as far as I know, just standard ones) and if I could trace that, what I meant is that its great from a pro-user/consumer perspective if say OmniFocus acts up on me one day and I can use DTrace to trace OmniFocus and give them tracing information to help them fix the bug, I am against using ptrace() on an app because it stops me from helping you debug your apps with DTrace, especially when it's not too much trouble for me to gather this information and send it to you to help you. Also for those of you asking... Yes I am considering writing a DTrace/Cocoa book to give this subject the justice is deserves. I've got some ideas, and as soon as I get settled into my last school term (for real this time) I'll think about this in more detail, but for the moment I am fairly busy.

Debug Cocoa with DTrace Guide & Embedding DTrace into Xcode Video

Debugging Cocoa with DTrace Guide

Finally today I can finally reveal my Debugging Cocoa with DTrace guide to you. I had originally meant that this be a quick article on this site, but I kept adding and adding to it and finally by the time I knew what I had gotten myself into it was 40+ pages long. This guide isn't as comprehensive as I would like even at the length that it is. It covers many things regarding the nature of tracing Cocoa apps with DTrace and some various useful techniques. If you don't know DTrace this guide has links to this site and Suns sites that introduce you to DTrace. Again many thanks to the reviewers who helped me in recognizing the things that could be improved or the finer points I missed. Thanks for your help! You can download it from here (right click & save as): http://www.1729.us/cocoasamurai/Debugging%20Cocoa%20with%20DTrace.pdf Embedding DTrace in your Xcode/Cocoa Project Video In this video I explain how to embed DTrace probes into your application which you can then use to get a lot of useful information about the state of your application. Watch it below or you should be able to watch and download it at viddler: http://www.viddler.com/explore/Machx/videos/8/ Update Viddler isn't allowing downloads at the moment. I don't know what is happening here as the downloads usually work fast, but if they don't work in a while I'll try and find out what's going on with Viddler. All I know is downloading/embedding is set to everyone so Viddler should be allowing downloads. Update 2: Viddler Downloads are working now :)

Announcing the DTrace TextMate Bundle Beta 1 (Updated)

UPDATE: The DTrace TextMate Bundle is now on Beta 3 and I am no longer hosting it, it is on GitHub and will be updated there. You should also go to GitHub to get the latest version and fixes for the bundle. I've been working for a little while on a DTrace Bundle for TextMate to make life writing DTrace Scripts a lot easier and now you can download Beta 1 of the DTrace TextMate Bundle. Now I should warn you it's very rough, but the bulk of the functionality is there. So if you are okay with an evolving bundle for TextMate go ahead and try it. Heres a video showing it off You can download it here: http://github.com/Machx/dtrace-textmate-bundle/tree/master This bundle is open source and is hosted at github: http://github.com/Machx/dtrace-textmate-bundle/tree/master. So go get git and you can keep it in sync with the latest fixes. Here are the things that work: Syntax Highlighting (mostly) D Language Code Folding All Tab Triggers All Included Scripts (Core Data, Garbage Collection, Cocoa Events, etc.) Bugs/What Doesn’t work After you do a tab trigger if you immediately try to do another tab trigger TextMate won’t let you (don’t know if this is my bug or a TextMate bug) Syntax Highlighting only highlights with one color (this will be corrected in the future) Run in Terminal Command doesn’t work right now There is a menu item “More Mac OS X D Scripts” that doesn’t contain anything at the moment, in time several useful DTrace scripts will be added, but for now it’s empty

Coming Soon... DTrace Bundle for TextMate

I've been working on this for a little while and it's still a relatively early work in progress, but the idea it to make scripts that you intend to run from Terminal much easier and even write scripts that mirror what's available in Instruments so you can make your own custom modifications if you want to. Stay tuned for more word on when this will be available....

Im a guest on Mac Developer Rountable 15: Getting Started with Cocoa

A couple weeks ago I was graciously invited on to be a guest for the Mac Developer Roundtable where the topic was "Getting Started with Cocoa" and I had a good discussion with Danny, Scotty, Brent, Mich and Justin about what it took to get started in Cocoa and what we wish we had paid attention to when we were starting out. I haven't listened to it yet, but if scotty can clean up my performance from the first time I was on this one should sound great. Listen to it now: http://www.mac-developer-network.com/podcasts/mdr/mdr015/