ttrace - strace as a tree

Uses strace to trace a program call and displays what's going on in a human friendly manner.

Project page

Installation and Usage

Install ttrace via pip:

[<python executable> -m] pip install [-U] ttrace

A new executable is then provided which can be used instead of strace:

ttrace [<ARGS>] <CMD>

Note that you would'nt provide strace arguments since ttrace provides them automatically.

Alternatively you can clone and use the current development tree, see below.

Intended interface

The following commands and outputs reflect the current development plan:

ttrace <CMD|LOGFILE>

Prints annotated, pre-formatted and filtered output next to the process' original stdout and stderr.

ttrace --attach <PID|NAME>

Attaches to the given process and displays all but stdout and stderr of the process of course.

<CMD> | ttrace [<OTHER-ARGS>]

Same as with attach but using pipe semantics (limited due to the mixing of stderr and strace output.

ttrace --grep <PATTERN> <CMD>

Applies pattern to the original strace output and only outputs the matching content.

ttrace --tree <CMD>

Populates and displays a tree while the program is running.

ttrace --hybrid <CMD>

Not sure yet - plan is to have ncurses based split views for optionally any of the following elements:

• tree output
• combined stdout and stderr
• alternatively split stdout and stderr
• strace console
• console with only warning character (whatever that means)

ttrace --timing <CMD>

ToDo for v1.0

• trace process termination
• output growing process tree
• report / visualize abnormal process termination
• report / visualize file access
• optionally turn PIDs into PID counters for comparability
• optionally print timestamp, pid, line number
• no color
• logging

Other ideas

• trace changes environment
• trace docker image usage
• highlight failed processes

Development & Contribution

pip3 install -U poetry pre-commit
git clone --recurse-submodules https://projects.om-office.de/frans/ttrace.git
cd ttrace
pre-commit install
# if you need a specific version of Python inside your dev environment
poetry env use ~/.pyenv/versions/3.10.4/bin/python3
poetry install

License

See License.md

Read

• The Difference Between fork(), vfork(), exec() and clone()
• HN: The Magic of strace
• The Magic of strace (archive.org)