C++ Event Tracing for Windows (ETW) wrapper [closed]

Question

I have been investigating Event Tracing for Windows (ETW) for use within existing backend/server applications. MSDN and other sources have sold the power of the framework and its integration with xperf, etc. which frankly I am impressed with.

However I am a bit concerned by the Win32 APIs and the overhead of working with the manifest coding compilating/registration, etc.

Folks, do you:

• Recommend it? Have problems using it with your systems?
• Know of a more C++/STL style wrapper?
• Are there tools for managing the manifest files?

Answer 1

Rather than using the Win32 API directly, I would recommend using WPP.

WPP is a pre-processor which allow you to write printf-like trace lines anywhere in your code and have the result of those, along with the additional data (e.g. the arguments passed to the various %d and %s in the trace) be logged to ETW.

The definite guide for this is WPP Tracing in Visual C++ 2010 Projects.

Answer 2

On the one hand, ETW is very powerful. But at the same time, it's not that easy to start with it.

However, there is a project on GitHub that simplifies writing your own ETW provider. And it's a good example of writing:

• ETW manifest (.man) to disclose event fields
• WPR profile (.wprp) to teach WPRUI (recorder) about your profiler
• WPA profile (.wpaProfile) and regions of interest (.xml) to teach WPA about representation of your data.

Please look at the Intel single event API (SEAPI) wiki.