Issue

This is NOT a duplicate of How to run Visual Studio CPU profiler on CMake project?, since in their case, their program spends 100% of the time in IDLE, while mine gives me [External code]. They also resolved their problem by running Visual Studio 2019 instead of 2022, while I am using Visual Studio 2019.

I'm trying to profile a CMake project with the Visual Studio Performance Profiler. My project is build with msvc_x64_x64 in RelWithDebugInfo, and I followed MSVC docs to add the /profile flag to CMake.

After running the CPU performance profiler, I get everything is running in [External Code], which is completely useless. I wonder if somehow the profiler cannot see the symbols of my project - but I compiled with RelWithDebugInfo, so it should be able to. When I ran the profiler, I also selected "Startup Project" rather than a hard-coded path to a binary.

This is my CMakeSettings.json if that's helpful.

{
  "configurations": [
    {
      "name": "x64-Debug",
      "generator": "Ninja",
      "configurationType": "Debug",
      "inheritEnvironments": [ "msvc_x64_x64" ],
      "buildRoot": "${projectDir}\\build\\${name}",
      "installRoot": "${projectDir}\\out\\install\\${name}",
      "cmakeCommandArgs": "",
      "buildCommandArgs": "",
      "ctestCommandArgs": ""
    },
    {
      "name": "x64-Release",
      "generator": "Ninja",
      "configurationType": "RelWithDebInfo",
      "buildRoot": "${projectDir}\\build\\${name}",
      "installRoot": "${projectDir}\\out\\install\\${name}",
      "cmakeCommandArgs": "",
      "ctestCommandArgs": "",
      "inheritEnvironments": [ "msvc_x64_x64" ]
    }
  ]
}

ninja -v verbose output (with include flags removed for brevity):

[1/3] C:\PROGRA~2\MICROS~2\2019\COMMUN~1\VC\Tools\MSVC\1429~1.301\bin\Hostx64\x64\cl.exe  /nologo /TP -DLIBJPEG_STATIC -DLZMA_API_STATIC -DOPJ_STATIC ...[include flags]... /DWIN32 /D_WINDOWS /W3 /GR /EHsc  /MD /Zi /O2 /Ob1 /DNDEBUG -std:c++17 /showIncludes /Fooct-invivo-align\CMakeFiles\oct-invivo-align-test.dir\oct-invivo-align.cpp.obj /Fdoct-invivo-align\CMakeFiles\oct-invivo-align-test.dir\ /FS -c ..\..\oct-invivo-align\oct-invivo-align.cpp
[2/3] C:\PROGRA~2\MICROS~2\2019\COMMUN~1\VC\Tools\MSVC\1429~1.301\bin\Hostx64\x64\cl.exe  /nologo /TP -DLIBJPEG_STATIC -DLZMA_API_STATIC -DOPJ_STATIC ...[include flags]... /DWIN32 /D_WINDOWS /W3 /GR /EHsc  /MD /Zi /O2 /Ob1 /DNDEBUG -std:c++17 /showIncludes /Fooct-invivo-align\CMakeFiles\oct-invivo-align-test.dir\main.cpp.obj /Fdoct-invivo-align\CMakeFiles\oct-invivo-align-test.dir\ /FS -c ..\..\oct-invivo-align\main.cpp
[3/3] cmd.exe /C "cd . && "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Community\Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\Microsoft\CMake\CMake\bin\cmake.exe" -E vs_link_exe --intdir=oct-invivo-align\CMakeFiles\oct-invivo-align-test.dir --rc=C:\PROGRA~2\WI3CF2~1\10\bin\100190~1.0\x64\rc.exe --mt=C:\PROGRA~2\WI3CF2~1\10\bin\100190~1.0\x64\mt.exe --manifests  -- C:\PROGRA~2\MICROS~2\2019\COMMUN~1\VC\Tools\MSVC\1429~1.301\bin\Hostx64\x64\link.exe /nologo @CMakeFiles\oct-invivo-align-test.rsp  /out:oct-invivo-align\oct-invivo-align-test.exe /implib:oct-invivo-align\oct-invivo-align-test.lib /pdb:oct-invivo-align\oct-invivo-align-test.pdb /version:0.0 /machine:x64 /debug /INCREMENTAL /subsystem:console  && cd ."

Solution

It turns out all I had to do was to check the Show External Code box in Filter...

Answered By - kwsp

Answer Checked By - Dawn Plyler (WPSolving Volunteer)

Saturday, October 29, 2022

[SOLVED] Visual Studio CPU Performance Profiler for CMake Projects

Issue

Solution