Gecko Profiler

The Firefox Profiler is the collection of tools used to profile Firefox. This is backed by the Gecko Profiler, which is the primarily C++ component that instruments Gecko. It is configurable, and supports a variety of data sources and recording modes. Primarily, it is used as a statistical profiler, where the execution of threads that have been registered with the profile is paused, and a sample is taken. Generally, this includes a stackwalk with combined native stack frame, JavaScript stack frames, and custom stack frame labels.

In addition to the sampling, the profiler can collect markers, which are collected deterministically (as opposed to statistically, like samples). These include some kind of text description, and optionally a payload with more information.

This documentation serves to document the Gecko Profiler and Base Profiler components, while the profiler.firefox.com interface is documented at profiler.firefox.com/docs/

• Profiler Code Overview
• Buffers and Memory Management
• Instrumenting JavaScript
• Instrumenting Rust
• Instrumenting Android
• Markers
• Profiling Memory
• Profiling Sandbox violations (Linux)

The following areas still need documentation:

• LUL

• Registering Threads

• Samples and Stack Walking

• Triggering Gecko Profiles in Automation

• JS Tracer

• Serialization