In general, to obtain useful information from binaries, certain compile flags should be used.

For using perf, one should compile OOFEM with the flag -fno-omit-frame-pointer First record a session using

perf record -g ./oofem -f myinputfile.in

which will generate a perf.data file.

Then you can visualize the results in several ways. A good, simple to understand method is to use Gprof2Dot to generate a complete callgraph:

perf script | ./gprof2dot.py -f perf | dot -Tsvg -o output.svg

Or use the ncurses program

perf report -G –sort comm,dso

Perf has very small overhead, but only does statistical sampling.

Callgrind is a tool in valgrind, and should only be used on medium. This has a huge overhead, so expect OOFEM to run over a hundred times slower through valgrind. Simply run

valgrind –tool=callgrind ./oofem -f myinputfile.in

and you will produce a new file named callgrind.out.123456 where the numbers at the end are randomized. Open this file in Kcachegrind to visualize the results.