2. DTrace and Erlang/OTP

2 DTrace and Erlang/OTP

2.1 History

The first implementation of DTrace probes for the Erlang virtual machine was presented at the 2008 Erlang User Conference. That work, based on the Erlang/OTP R12 release, was discontinued due to what appears to be miscommunication with the original developers.

Several users have created Erlang port drivers, linked-in drivers, or NIFs that allow Erlang code to try to activate a probe, e.g. foo_module:dtrace_probe("message goes here!").

2.2 Goals

  • Annotate as much of the Erlang VM as is practical.
  • The initial goal is to trace file I/O operations.
  • Support all platforms that implement DTrace: OS X, Solaris, and (I hope) FreeBSD and NetBSD.
  • To the extent that it's practical, support SystemTap on Linux vi