NAME

Runops::Recorder - Runops replacement which saves what is being performed

SYNOPSIS

  # will save to a rr-<timestamp> directory in the current directory
  perl -MRunops::Recorder <program>

  # will save to a custom directory 
  perl -MRunops::Recorder=my_recording <program>
  
  # and then to view the recording
  rr-viewer <path to recording>
  

DESCRIPTION

Runops::Recorder is an alternative runops which saves what it does into a file that can later be viewed using the rr-viewer tool.

HOW TO RECORD

Simply use this module and it'll replace perl's standard runloop with its own. By default a recording goes into a directory named rr-<date>-_<time>. If you want an alternate name just pass it as the first argument to the use (eg -MRunops::Recorder=foo).

Sometimes perl will optimize away COPs and this may look confusing when viewing. If you want to turn of the optimizer pass -noopt when using this module.

It's possible to adjust the buffer size which is how much it'll keep in memory before flushing it to disk. This is done by passing -bs=SIZE where SIZE is a number followed by an optional G/M/K/g/m/k to denote the multiple. G, M and K are base-2 and g, m, k base-10. So 512K would be 524288 bytes. If ommited a default of 64K is used. The minimum size is 128 bytes.

It is possible to prevent continous store to disk with -nostore. This is ment to be used with -die that dumps the buffer to disk when an exception occurs.

VIEWING THE RECORDING

Use the 'rr-viewer' tool. It just takes the path with the recording as an argument. Press 'q' to quit or any other key to step to the next event. Press 's' to skip any events in the current file until end of recording. Press 'a' to toggle wether we should skip whatever is in @INC when the recorder what loaded. Press 'h' for help.

The environment variable RR_AUTORUN tells the viewer to run automaticly. The value should be the sleep time until stepping. And yes, it uses Time::HiRes so you can give it fracitonal seconds.

If you set RR_SKIP_INC the autorun will not show @INC files as the 'a' option does.

FUNCTIONS

dump ( $name )

Dumps the buffer as $name in the recording. Adds .dump to the $name if ommited.

TODO

Record more things such as changes to variables, opened file descriptors etc.

AUTHOR

Claes Jakobsson, <claesjac@cpan.org>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Copyright (C) 2011 by Claes Jakobsson

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself, either Perl version 5.10.0 or, at your option, any later version of Perl 5 you may have available.