From: cprice@mips.com (Charlie Price)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mips
Subject: Re: Information about Pixie file formats
Date: 18 Dec 1992 21:39:49 GMT
Organization: MIPS Technologies, Inc
Distribution: usa
NNTP-Posting-Host: lloyd.mti.sgi.com

In article <1grnu9INNh9h@darkstar.UCSC.EDU> leslie@cse.ucsc.edu (Leslie Grate) writes:
>I am looking for the file formats of the files generated by
>pixie, the MIPS code analysis tool.
>Specifically, the .Addrs and the .Counts files.

I answered this request via mail, but the subsequent postings might leave
news readers with the idea that the pixie format is a deep secret or
that it varies wildly over time.
None of the format is a secret, it is just one of those things that
fell through the cracks and never got documemented in vendor-supplied
documentation.
Fortunately, you are not out of luck.
Formats for the MIPS version of pixie is described in a document written 
by Michael Smith of Stanford and this is available via ftp.

Pixie output is slightly modified by some other MIPS-based system
vendors -- in particular I know about SGI.
The most recent SGI format is the same as the old format, but has some
headers prepended to the .Addrs file to allow a compact .Addr and
.Count file to represent a sparse address space including
shared objects.
The headers are described in /usr/include/cmplrs/prof_header.h
and poking around with a few example .Addr and .Counts files should
show you how to get at the data.

No, of course there aren't version stamps or anything so reasonable
as that.
However...
MIPS Technologies is actively working on pixie to live in the
"brave new world" of 64-bit addresses.
Presumably our next major effort will have adequate documentation so
that people won't have to ask this kind of queston --
or at least the answer will be RTFM.

Charlie Price      cprice@mti.sgi.com        (415) 390-4457
MS 10U-178 / MIPS Technologies / P.O. Box 7311 / Mountain View, CA   94043


=========== instructions from Michael Smith follow ===================
You may get a copy of the pixie manual and xsim through anonymous ftp
from velox.stanford.edu (36.22.0.168).  That is,

  home_system> ftp velox.stanford.edu
  Connected to velox...
  Name (velox:user): anonymous
  Password (velox:anonymous): your_login
  331 Guest login ok,...
  ftp> cd pub/pixie_doc
  250 CWD command successful.
  ftp> ls
  ...

The following files are under the pixie_doc directory:

  manual.ps	- postscript copy of the pixie manual
  manual.dvi	- latex dvi copy of the pixie manual
  Makefile	- makefile for xsim
  *.h,*.c	- C++ modules for xsim
  cache.c	- an unfinished C module for xsim
  tpixie	- csh driver for pixie to be used with xsim
  README	- this note

Run the ftp 'get' command to get the files you want, i.e.

  ftp> get manual.ps
  ...
  ftp> quit
  221 Goodbye.
  home_system>

If you have any comments or suggestions, I would be happy to hear them.
Please e-mail them to smith@amadeus.stanford.edu.  Also, if you give
this information to another university and they wish to be informed of
any updates/changes/corrections to xsim or the pixie manual, please have
them drop me a e-mail note with their name and e-mail address.

Thanks and enjoy,

Mike

smith@amadeus.stanford.edu	(415) 725-3730
Center for Integrated Systems, CIS 065
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-4070
-- 
Charlie Price      cprice@mti.sgi.com        (415) 390-4457
MS 10U-178 / MIPS Technologies / P.O. Box 7311 / Mountain View, CA   94043