The docs for GetObjectSize have recently been updated with this info, but I wanted to mention it here, too, to ensure you were aware of this information. Some profilers manually advance through objects on the heap, inspecting their field values, by starting...

As mentioned in this post , ObjectIDs are really pointers to managed objects on the GC heap. And as you know, objects get collected or move around on the heap during GCs. So how do you safely work with ObjectIDs? The overall guidance is that if you...

Overview In this post, I write about the two primary kinds of IDs your profiler deals with, when each kind is appropriate to use, how to convert between those two types of IDs, and some gotchas with those conversions—particularly in how they may invoke...

By now, you’ve surely downloaded your copy of the .NET 4.5 Developer Preview, and you’ve opened up the brand-spanking new corprof.idl, and searched that file for all the new APIs available in 4.5.  There’s a bunch with “ReJIT” in the name, and all...

Anyone who’s read a newspaper in the past few weeks knows that the Profiling API in .NET 4.5 will supported a limited form of ReJIT.  Well, the news might not be that hot, but that’s what I tell myself.  I will be discussing the feature in depth...

Yes!  Check out this new video on channel 9 for the scoop: http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/CLR-45-David-Broman-Inside-Re-JIT In the upcoming .NET 4.5, we do indeed plan to include a limited form of ReJIT that will allow diagnostic tools...

  CLRProfiler V4 is now publicly available.  You may download from here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=be2d842b-fdce-4600-8d32-a3cf74fda5e1 This is of interest both to folks who want a free profiler to diagnose...

A while back I posted some sample code written by Rico Mariani to parse CLR metadata signatures. This code is now also available on the MSDN Code Gallery SigParse page. If any of you were nervous about incorporating that source into your product without...

My previous post on New stuff in Profiling API for upcoming CLR 4.0 mentioned that any profiler that implements ICorProfilerCallback3 must be “side-by-side aware”.  This post goes into more detail on how to do this, and how to test it. What are in...

I described how profilers may attach to already-running processes in some previous posts ( #1 and #2 ).  In this post I’m writing about how profilers that are already loaded may detach from a running process before that process exits.  Like...

If you’re writing a profiler that you expect to run against CLR 2.0 or greater, you probably care about generics. Whether you're reporting call stacks or instrumenting code, it's possible the users of your profiler wrote some of that code using generic...

The Silverlight 4 beta has been released a while ago (see this ), and one of the new features in Silverlight 4 is the ability to use the very same profiling API that is available for regular CLR-based apps (referred to as “desktop” CLR apps).  In...

In a previous post , I outlined to all you profiler writers how to modify your profiler so it can attach to running processes, and what sorts of limitations your profiler will have when it attaches.  In this post, I answer the question, “My profiler...

When CLR V2 came out, we made a big decision.  If your profiler has not been upgraded for V2 (i.e., if your profiler does not support ICorProfilerCallback2), then the CLR will not allow your profiler to run.  Why?  CLR V2 had some radical...

A new feature in CLR V4 is the ability to attach a profiler to a process after that process has already started. The usefulness of this is fairly obvious to anyone who's ever attached a debugger to a running-process: It's helpful when diagnosing hard...

All you profiler writers will want to try out your profiler on the latest and greatest! Information on getting beta 2 of CLR V4 and Visual Studio 2010 is available here . The beta 2 docs for the profiling API start here . There have been some...

MSDN defines “type forwarding” as moving “a type to another assembly without having to recompile applications that use the original assembly”.  In this post, I’ll talk about examining a particular type in Microsoft’s .NET Framework library that gets...

One of the new features in CLR V4 is the ability to load your profiler without needing to register it first.  In V2, we would look at the following environment variables: COR_ENABLE_PROFILING=1 COR_PROFILER={ CLSID of profiler } and look up the CLSID...

Find out on channel 9 as Jon Langdon, Thomas Lai, and I discuss some of the new diagnostics features in CLR V4.

Ok, you've installed VS 2010 beta 1, along with .NET FX 4.0 beta 1, and you're wondering--can you run your profiler against this new .NET framework without recompiling the profiler? Yes, you can!  Though not by default.  Although CLR V4 is much...

Now is the time to try out your profiler against the new .NET FX 4.0 Beta 1 bits.  I'll be writing about some gotchas, and how to take advantage of the new features.  But first, get started downloading: Visual Studio 2010 Product Page You can...

Jonathan Keljo's blog entry on the enter/leave/tailcall function hooks had a link to sample code that's been broken for a while. You can now find the sample code here: FunctionHooks.zip

What follows is a long-lost blog entry that Jonathan Keljo had been working on. I brushed off some of the dust and am posting it here for your enjoyment. Thank you, Jonathan! In CLR 2.0 we added a new HRESULT, CORPROF_E_UNSUPPORTED_CALL_SEQUENCE. This...

Now that we've finally announced at PDC many of the new features coming up in the next major release of Visual Studio and CLR, I can elaborate some on what's coming up for the profiling API.  Also, see Rick Byers's blog entry which also talks about...

See Soma's blog entry for more information.  Also, I updated the table that maps Visual Studio versions, .NET Framework versions, and CLR versions here .