vmprof is a delicate piece of software. Following considerations should be present when developing it.
Supported platform combinations (all combinations are supported):
-
pypy (>=4.1), cpython
-
windows, os x and linux
CPython should be tested on both TeamCity and Travis, PyPy is more
patchy since there is never a new enough version on either. Since PyPy
only exercises the pure python part, please test it each time you change
and interface between _vmprof and vmprof.
On OS X and Linux we handle signal handlers. This means that we have to be very very careful at what we can and cannot do. Notably, we can't use malloc, locks or refcounting in any of the signal handlers. Python data should be read-only and we should be prepared to read garbage or NULL from anything.
On windows we use an external thread, so it's an imperative we freeze the thread we're inspecting. It's possible that the interpreter state handling is not thread safe in a way it should be, investigate how we can improve it.