Configuration

Tracer can be configured with arguments and with configuration file.

List of possible arguments for all activated extensions is available by invoking tracer with -h or –help. Third party arguments shall be defined after core parameters, otherwise parsing may fail (especially if third party argument has value).

After configuration parameters are parsed from arguments then they are merged with configurations stored in ~/.tracerrc and tracer.conf.py stored in current working directory or file provided by -c.

Configuration file is plain python script that can set any option listed in tracer arguments and additionally can set some functions that influences tracing. Example configuration files shows some usage.

You can for example set program, arguments and output and invoke tracing by calling only $ tracer.

program = "./myapp"
arguments = ["-x", "-y"]
output = "./report"

Ignore files

Ignore some files by adding them to the ignore_files. Files can be also expressed by regexp.

ignore_files = [
    r'\/lib[^\/]+.so(\.[\d\-_]+)*$',  # .so shared libraries
    '/etc/passwd'
]

Ignore descriptors

You can also write more complex resules. For each new descriptor filter_out_descriptor is called. The only argument is instance of class Descriptor. Your decision can be based on descriptor properties, process, etc.

# pass everything except pipes
def filter_out_descriptor(descriptor):
    return descriptor.is_pipe