EXPERIMENT: Add nongnu.org libunwind as alternative unwinding backend NOT FOR REVIEW Add optional support for nongnu.org libunwind as an alternative to Android's libunwindstack for DWARF-based stack unwinding in both traced_perf and heapprofd. Selected at build time via the GN flag enable_perfetto_libunwind. libunwindstack pulls in several vendored Android dependencies (android-libprocinfo, android-libbase, bionic kernel UAPI headers) making it difficult to use perfetto's profiling tools on non-Android platforms. With this change, setting enable_perfetto_libunwind=true builds everything without any libunwindstack dependency. The refactoring introduces: - An UnwindBackend interface with two implementations: LibunwindstackBackend (wrapping existing logic) and LibunwindBackend (using libunwind's remote API with custom accessors for sampled stack overlays and /proc/pid/mem). - Backend-agnostic types (UnwindFrame, UnwindErrorCode, RegisterData) replacing direct use of unwindstack types throughout the pipeline. - Perfetto-owned register capture (regs_common.h, regs_local.h, .S) so the heapprofd client no longer depends on libunwindstack for AsmGetRegs, ArchEnum, or register constants. - Wire protocol updated to use Perfetto-owned types, maintaining ABI compatibility with existing register layouts. - Bookkeeping simplified to use UnwindFrame directly, removing the intermediate unwindstack::FrameData conversion layer. Also fixes nongnu libunwind's Gget_proc_info_in_range.c which incorrectly dereferenced a remote .eh_frame_hdr address as a local pointer, causing crashes during remote unwinding. libunwind v1.8.0 is vendored via tools/install-build-deps and built from source with UNW_REMOTE_ONLY (no local unwinding assembly). Pre-baked config headers live in buildtools/nongnu_libunwind_config/. On non-Android Linux standalone builds, enable_perfetto_libunwind defaults to true.
Perfetto is an open-source suite of SDKs, daemons and tools which use tracing to help developers understand the behaviour of complex systems and root-cause functional and performance issues on client and embedded systems.
It is a production-grade tool that is the default tracing system for the Android operating system and the Chromium browser.
Perfetto is not a single tool, but a collection of components that work together:
Perfetto was designed to be a versatile and powerful tracing system for a wide range of use cases.
ftrace, allowing you to visualize scheduling, syscalls, interrupts, and custom kernel tracepoints on a timeline.chrome://tracing. Use it to debug and root-cause issues in the browser, V8, and Blink.We‘ve designed our documentation to guide you to the right information as quickly as possible, whether you’re a newcomer to performance analysis or an experienced developer.
New to tracing? If you're unfamiliar with concepts like tracing and profiling, start here:
Ready to dive in? Our “Getting Started” guide is the main entry point for all users. It will help you find the right tutorials and documentation for your specific needs:
Want the full overview? For a comprehensive look at what Perfetto is, why it's useful, and who uses it, see our main documentation page:
For users interested in the Debian distribution of Perfetto, the official source of truth and packaging efforts are maintained at Debian Perfetto Salsa Repository
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