Programmtrace

Programmtrace, or program trace, refers to the recording of events that occur during the execution of a software program in order to understand its behavior, diagnose problems, or optimize performance. A trace captures a chronology of events such as function calls and returns, thread switches, I/O operations, and timing information. Traces can be produced by instrumentation, which inserts event emitters into the code, or by dynamic tracing, which attaches to a running process without changing its source.

Traces may vary in granularity and type. Event-based traces record discrete events in the control flow, while instruction-level traces log executed instructions or memory accesses. Data traces capture values of variables, registers, or memory states. Tracing can be performed continuously or intermittently through sampling, to reduce overhead, or by recording a complete execution history for reproducibility.

Formats and tooling: traces are stored in various formats, ranging from plain text logs to compact binary representations. Widely used tracing infrastructures include DTrace and LTTng for system and application tracing, ETW on Windows, and perf on Linux. Many language runtimes offer built-in tracing hooks, and dedicated profilers or debuggers can export traces for analysis in external tools.

Applications and tradeoffs: Programmtrace supports debugging, performance profiling, concurrency analysis, and security auditing, enabling reproducible investigations. The main drawbacks are the overhead of data collection, potential privacy concerns, and the risk of producing overwhelming data volumes. Effective use typically involves selective instrumentation, sampling strategies, and post-processing queries.

See also: program tracing, runtime instrumentation, event tracing, performance profiling. Note that Programmtrace is a descriptive term rather than a single standardized product, and its exact meaning varies by platform and context.