MoNoNoKe blogsA few words from the MoNoNoKe folks

Finally got around to creating a repository for the source code of ExtPaste a ExtJS [1] / Django [2] powered pastebin [3].

People where asking me about the source code for http://extpaste.com on the ExtJS forums for some time now. So here it is: http://hg.trbs.net/extpaste/

The project was development and currently runs on a Django version before 1.0 :( But i'm working at this moment to get the repository up to date with Django 1.0. I've already ported it to NewForms-Admin so the biggest thing left is to port to newforms.

If everything goes fine the code in the repository should be on Django 1.0 before the end of the day.

Updated 15-Nov-2008: Extpaste now runs on Django 1.0 and higher

Today i've added a new option to Django-Extension's runprofileserver to make like a bit easier for people who want to use KCacheGrind to profile Django.

This was sparked by profiling one of the scientific Python scripts i wrote for my research project. I wanted to see where (or at least if) i could squeeze a bit more performance out of it without resorting to ctypes/c-modules or weave. For more information about the latter see: http://www.scipy.org/PerformancePython

So i disabled Psyco [1] which confuses the profiler and started my program with the cProfiler enabled and started analyzing it's output.

you can do this easily by executing:

  $ python -m cProfiler ./my_application.py

From earlier encounters with profiling i found that KCacheGrind is a really awesome application for viewing and analyzing profile data. However Python's profiler module cannot directly save it's data in a format which is compatible with KCacheGrind. There are a few ways around this and one of them is a script called: lsprofcalltree.py [2].

It converts the profile information from cProfiler to something which is readable by KCacheGrind. Best of all you can use it as an in-place replacement for the Python interpreter so it's just as easy to use as the "$ python -m cProfiler" line.

Coming back to the runprofileserver I implemented lsprofcalltree directly into the extension command so you do not have to convert the output data by hand later. All you need to do now is enable the --kcachegrind option and all the profiler data is automatically saved in the KCacheGrind compatible format.

Example:

$ mkdir /tmp/my-profile-data
$ ./manage.py runprofileserver --kcachegrind --prof-path=/tmp/my-profile-data
Validating models...
0 errors found

Django version 1.0-post-release-SVN-SVN-unknown, using settings 'complete_project.settings'
Development server is running at http://127.0.0.1:8000/
Quit the server with CONTROL-C.
[13/Nov/2008 06:29:38] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 41107
[13/Nov/2008 06:29:39] "GET /site_media/base.css?743 HTTP/1.1" 200 17227
[13/Nov/2008 06:29:39] "GET /site_media/logo.png HTTP/1.1" 200 3474
[13/Nov/2008 06:29:39] "GET /site_media/jquery.js HTTP/1.1" 200 31033
[13/Nov/2008 06:29:39] "GET /site_media/heading.png HTTP/1.1" 200 247
[13/Nov/2008 06:29:39] "GET /site_media/base.js HTTP/1.1" 200 751
<ctrl-c>
$ kcachegrind /tmp/my-profile-data/root.12574391.592.prof

Here is a screenshot of how the above commands might look in KCacheGrind:

More information can be found at http://code.google.com/p/django-command-extensions/wiki/RunProfileServer

Have fun profiling :)

P.S. Having fancy tools is never a replacement for learning and knowing about what code actually does and what profile data represents !