scarroll's Blog

A blog about Visual Studio Profiling, Code Coverage and CS Research!

VSTS Profiler @ TechEd2007

Hey all, Marc (the QA lead) and myself (the Dev lead) of the VSTS profiler are sitting in front of...

Author: scarroll Date: 06/04/2007

Visual Studio Launch: Bangkok (pre-game edition)

Sawatdee Khrup! So I arrived in Thailand for Visual Studio Launch which will be in BecTero Hall here...

Author: scarroll Date: 11/14/2005

Profiling FAQ #7: What does the column name X mean?

UPDATE: msdn2 seems to be flaking on this... I stuck a msn cached version below. I just noticed that...

Author: scarroll Date: 10/07/2005

Profiling FAQ #6: Why does the profiler say Foo calls Bar, when I know it doesn't!

Here's another fun one from the internal support alias. When you profile with the VS Profiler, you...

Author: scarroll Date: 07/25/2005

Meltdown Profiler Tips and Tricks Talk Details

Online registration for the Meltdown DirectX conference ends tomorrow July 22. I tried my best to...

Author: scarroll Date: 07/21/2005

Profiling FAQ #5: Why are there two copies of my function in Instrumentation mode function report?

The most common reason for this to occur in Instrumentation mode is that the dll you instrumented is...

Author: scarroll Date: 07/21/2005

Speaking at MS Meltdown about the VS Profiler

I'm speaking at the Microsoft Meltdown 2005 conference at the end of the month. The topic is tips...

Author: scarroll Date: 06/30/2005

Public Chat: This Wednesday

Hey folks. We have a public chat scheduled for tomorrow. I just checked the schedule and we have a...

Author: scarroll Date: 06/13/2005

In honor of TechEd: Profiler Greatest Hits bloggin'

My illustrious co-worker, Ian, is compiling a central resource of all the most essential profiler...

Author: scarroll Date: 06/09/2005

Doing My Part to Destroy MSFT Productivity

I had to help a high school kid solve this problem yesterday. It’s pretty interesting I think.I sent...

Author: scarroll Date: 06/08/2005

Offtopic: Memorial Day BBQ Grill Suggestion

Total tangent here, but I just made a really great meal and I must blog about it. Side Dish: Roasted...

Author: scarroll Date: 05/28/2005

Beta2 CLR Symbols Live!

The symbols for several key CLR Beta2 Symbols are finally on the symbol server. Go forth and...

Author: scarroll Date: 05/27/2005

UPDATE + APOLOGY! (Some) CLR Public Symbols still not on symbol server

Sorry folks. I want to update this blog about this issue. We just made another symbol publication...

Author: scarroll Date: 05/25/2005

Profiling Tip: Amdahl's Law and Long Sampling Runs

A lot of my graduate work was in the area of parallel computing so we spent a lot of time with...

Author: scarroll Date: 05/19/2005

CLR Symbols for Beta 2 release imminent

There was a problem with the original publication of the CLR Symbols for some binaries (mscoree,...

Author: scarroll Date: 05/17/2005

Lesson on Intern Mentoring from the Gilmore Girls

I took the MSFT "Intern Mentoring" training last week in preparation for the impending arrival of my...

Author: scarroll Date: 05/16/2005

Vacation Time

I'll be on vacation for the next two weeks. I promise to be a good little blogger and write more...

Author: scarroll Date: 04/13/2005

Profiling FAQ #4: The top sampled function is [ntdll.dll], now what do I do?!

One of our big missions here in VS Profiler land is to bring profiling tools to people who maybe...

Author: scarroll Date: 04/13/2005

Profiling FAQ #3: How do -exclude and -include on vsinstr differ from -start / -suspend / -resume, etc.

VSinstr has two different categories of switches. The first category of switches control which...

Author: scarroll Date: 04/13/2005

Paper Summary #2: Where the Bugs Are

Who wrote it:Thomas J. Ostrand, Elaine J. Weyuker, Robert M. Bell from ATT Labs - Research What's it...

Author: scarroll Date: 04/13/2005

Paper Summary #1: Efficient and Precise Dynamic Impact Analysis Using Execute-After Sequences

What's the name of the paper? Efficient and Precise Dynamic Impact Analysis Using Execute-After...

Author: scarroll Date: 04/10/2005

New Category: Research

So I'm going to try to add a new category of posts to this blog for interesting papers in Computer...

Author: scarroll Date: 04/10/2005

Profiling FAQ #2: Why am I seeing functions from DLLs I didn't instrument in my Function view?

This is actually just a corollary of the "Why don't instrumentation and sampling calltrees look the...

Author: scarroll Date: 04/08/2005

Profiling FAQ #1: Why doesn't my Sampling Call Tree look like my Instrumentation Call Tree

This post is adapted from an internal mail. The customers were somewhat confused about the reason...

Author: scarroll Date: 04/08/2005

Must watch Managed Perf Primer on Channel 9

I watched all 50 minutes of Rico Mariani's new Channel9 video which can be found at...

Author: scarroll Date: 04/07/2005

Profiling Tip #2: Managed Code profiling and the command line

The most common question that comes in to the internal profiler by far is "Why am I not seeing any...

Author: scarroll Date: 04/07/2005

Profiling Tip #1: release vs. debug

Don't laugh! I've seen this happen a few times now. In the UI , if you are debugging your debug...

Author: scarroll Date: 04/07/2005

What I've been up to... dogfood deployment

So over the past two months, I've been busy with the rolling out of the VS profiler to as many...

Author: scarroll Date: 04/07/2005

Line Coverage

The Code Coverage instrumentation in Visual Studio is based on binary instrumentation instead of...

Author: scarroll Date: 02/14/2005

Quick Survey: Coverage metrics

Hey folks, I'm taking a quick survey. If you are currently using code coverage metrics in your...

Author: scarroll Date: 02/14/2005

Block Statistics in Code Coverage

In the code coverage analysis in VSTS, we provide two types of stats: block coverage and line...

Author: scarroll Date: 01/14/2005

Requesting recommendations

I'm looking for a good book on performance analysis for database-centric applications and/or web...

Author: scarroll Date: 07/14/2004

Book recommendation - The Art of Computer Systems Performance Analysis

I'm about 250 pages into The Art of Computer Systems Performance Analysis : Techniques for...

Author: scarroll Date: 07/14/2004

An Introduction

Hello World. My name is Steve Carroll, and I'm a developer on the Visual Studio Team System team....

Author: scarroll Date: 05/27/2004