Questions and Answers
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Chapter 5. Questions and Answers

This document may have been updated since your installation. You can find the latest version at http://docs.kde.org/development/en/tdesdk/.

5.1. What is TDECachegrind for? I have no idea.
5.2. What is the difference between 'Incl.' and 'Self' ?
5.3. The toolbar/menubar of my KCachegrind looks so spartanic. Is this normal?
5.4. If I double-click on a function down in the Call Graph View, it shows for the function main the same cost as the selected function. Isn't this supposed to be constant 100% ?
5.1.

What is TDECachegrind for? I have no idea.

TDECachegrind is a helpful at a later stage in software development, called Profiling. If you don't develop applications, you don't need TDECachegrind.

5.2.

What is the difference between 'Incl.' and 'Self' ?

These are cost attributes for functions regarding some event type. As functions can call each other, it makes sense to distinguish the cost of the function itself ('Self Cost') and the cost including all called functions ('Inclusive Cost'). 'Self' is sometimes also referred to as 'Exclusive' costs.

So, for example, for main(), you will always have a inclusive cost of almost 100%, whereas the self cost is negligible when the real work is done in another function.

5.3.

The toolbar/menubar of my KCachegrind looks so spartanic. Is this normal?

Obviously KCachegrind is wrongly installed on your system. It is recommended to compile it with the installation prefix to be your system wide KDE base directory like configure --prefix=/opt/trinity; make install. If you choose another directory like $HOME/kde, you should set the environment variable TDEDIR to this directory before running KCachegrind.

5.4.

If I double-click on a function down in the Call Graph View, it shows for the function main the same cost as the selected function. Isn't this supposed to be constant 100% ?

You have activated a function below main() with cost less than main(). For any function, only that part of the full cost of the function is shown, that is spent while the activated function is running; that is, the cost shown for any function can never be higher than the cost of the activated function.

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