Debugging Performance Issues Using Visual Studio 2017

1. www.xedotnet.org
Debugging Performance
Issues Using Visual Studio
Mirco Vanini
Microsoft® MVP Windows Development
AllSeen Alliance - AllJoyn® Ambassador
Open Connectivity Foundation - OCF® Ambassador

2. Why is performance important?
Continuously evaluate performance during normal
debugging
PerfTips
Memory tool
CPU graph
Drill into the details of a performance issue
Timeline tool
CPU tool
Standalone Profiler
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Agenda

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Why is performance important?
0%
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App Freezes Crashes Slow Responsiveness Heavy Battery Usage
Reasons for bad reviews

4. The ability to monitor
performance while debugging,
and correlate performance
data with debugging activity
A much richer and more
useful experience for
IntelliTrace and the Output
window, dramatically
shortening the time it takes
you to diagnose an issue or
verify a fix.
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What are Diagnostic Tools?

5. Demo
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PerfTips
(tooltips with performance
information)

6. Indicating how long the program was running during the
previous step or since the last breakpoint
Quickly measure time between breaks
Excludes major debugger related overhead
• Time stopped under the debugger (e.g. stopped at a
breakpoint)
• Symbol loading
Best suited for order of magnitude measurements
• Greatest accuracy on CLR 4.6 and Windows 10
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PerfTips

7. Shows CPU utilization across all available cores
Spikes can be interesting, even if less than 100%
Available after debugging session has stopped
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CPU graph

8. The garbage collector serves as an automatic memory
manager
• Enables you to develop your application without having to
free memory
• Allocates objects on the managed heap efficiently
• Reclaims objects that are no longer being used, clears their
memory, and keeps the memory available for future
allocations. Managed objects automatically get clean
content to start with, so their constructors do not have to
initialize every data field
• Provides memory safety by making sure that an object
cannot use the content of another object
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Fundamentals of Garbage Collection

9. Three common causes of memory leaks in managed
applications
• Holding references to managed objects
• Failing to release unmanaged resources
• Failing to dispose Drawing objects
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Common Causes of Memory Leaks in .NET

10. Demo
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Memory Tool

11. Compare memory consumption over time
• Provides sizes and count for each type
• Filters out objects marked for garbage collection (.NET)
Works for both C++ and .NET apps
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Memory tool

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Performance profile

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Performance wizard

14. Demo
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Timeline Tool

15. Identify app performance issues due to
• Parsing & Layout
• Application code or other runtime CPU consumption
Monitor FPS throughput
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Timeline tool

16. Records which functions are using the CPU the most
• Takes a call stack from the CPU every millisecond
• Shows aggregate report
Collects mixed mode stacks (.NET & C++)
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CPU tool

17. Part of Visual Studio Remote tools
CPU sampling on Windows 8+ works with x-copy
https://www.visualstudio.com/downloads/
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Standalone Profiler

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Who I am
www.adamfactory.com
mirco.vanini@adamfactory.com
@MircoVanini
Mirco Vanini
Microsoft® MVP Windows Development
AllSeen Alliance - AllJoyn® Ambassador
Open Connectivity Foundation - OCF® Ambassador
TinyCLR.it