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  1. .\"
  2. .\" mono manual page.
  3. .\" (C) 2003 Ximian, Inc.
  4. .\" (C) 2004-2005 Novell, Inc.
  5. .\" Author:
  6. .\" Miguel de Icaza ([email protected])
  7. .\"
  8. .TH Mono "Mono 2.2"
  9. .SH NAME
  10. mono \- Mono's ECMA-CLI native code generator (Just-in-Time and Ahead-of-Time)
  11. .SH SYNOPSIS
  12. .PP
  13. .B mono [options] file [arguments...]
  14. .SH DESCRIPTION
  15. \fImono\fP is a runtime implementation of the ECMA Common Language
  16. Infrastructure. This can be used to run ECMA and .NET applications.
  17. .PP
  18. The runtime contains a native code generator that transforms the
  19. Common Intermediate Language into native code.
  20. .PP
  21. The code generator can operate in two modes: just in time compilation
  22. (JIT) or ahead of time compilation (AOT). Since code can be
  23. dynamically loaded, the runtime environment and the JIT are always
  24. present, even if code is compiled ahead of time.
  25. .PP
  26. The runtime loads the specified
  27. .I file
  28. and optionally passes
  29. the
  30. .I arguments
  31. to it. The
  32. .I file
  33. is an ECMA assembly. They typically have a .exe or .dll extension.
  34. .PP
  35. The runtime provides a number of configuration options for running
  36. applications, for developing and debugging, and for testing and
  37. debugging the runtime itself.
  38. .SH PORTABILITY
  39. On Unix-based systems, Mono provides a mechanism to emulate the
  40. Windows-style file access, this includes providing a case insensitive
  41. view of the file system, directory separator mapping (from \\ to /) and
  42. stripping the drive letters.
  43. .PP
  44. This functionality is enabled by setting the
  45. .B MONO_IOMAP
  46. environment variable to one of
  47. .B all, drive
  48. and
  49. .B case.
  50. .PP
  51. See the description for
  52. .B MONO_IOMAP
  53. in the environment variables section for more details.
  54. .SH RUNTIME OPTIONS
  55. The following options are available:
  56. .TP
  57. \fB--aot\fR, \fB--aot[=options]\fR
  58. This option is used to precompile the CIL code in the specified
  59. assembly to native code. The generated code is stored in a file with
  60. the extension .so. This file will be automatically picked up by the
  61. runtime when the assembly is executed.
  62. .Sp
  63. Ahead-of-Time compilation is most useful if you use it in combination
  64. with the -O=all,-shared flag which enables all of the optimizations in
  65. the code generator to be performed. Some of those optimizations are
  66. not practical for Just-in-Time compilation since they might be very
  67. time consuming.
  68. .Sp
  69. Unlike the .NET Framework, Ahead-of-Time compilation will not generate
  70. domain independent code: it generates the same code that the
  71. Just-in-Time compiler would produce. Since most applications use a
  72. single domain, this is fine. If you want to optimize the generated
  73. code for use in multi-domain applications, consider using the
  74. -O=shared flag.
  75. .Sp
  76. This pre-compiles the methods, but the original assembly is still
  77. required to execute as this one contains the metadata and exception
  78. information which is not available on the generated file. When
  79. precompiling code, you might want to compile with all optimizations
  80. (-O=all). Pre-compiled code is position independent code.
  81. .Sp
  82. Pre compilation is just a mechanism to reduce startup time, increase
  83. code sharing across multiple mono processes and avoid just-in-time
  84. compilation program startup costs. The original assembly must still
  85. be present, as the metadata is contained there.
  86. .Sp
  87. AOT code typically can not be moved from one computer to another
  88. (CPU-specific optimizations that are detected at runtime) so you
  89. should not try to move the pre-generated assemblies or package the
  90. pre-generated assemblies for deployment.
  91. .Sp
  92. A few options are available as a parameter to the
  93. .B --aot
  94. command line option. The options are separated by commas, and more
  95. than one can be specified:
  96. .RS
  97. .ne 8
  98. .TP
  99. .I bind-to-runtime-version
  100. .Sp
  101. If specified, forces the generated AOT files to be bound to the
  102. runtime version of the compiling Mono. This will prevent the AOT
  103. files from being consumed by a different Mono runtime.
  104. .I full
  105. This is currently an experimental feature as it is not complete.
  106. This instructs Mono to precompile code that has historically not been
  107. precompiled with AOT.
  108. .TP
  109. .I write-symbols
  110. Instructs the AOT compiler to emit debug symbol information.
  111. .TP
  112. .I static
  113. Create an ELF object file (.o) which can be statically linked into an executable
  114. when embedding the mono runtime. When this option is used, the object file needs to
  115. be registered with the embedded runtime using the mono_aot_register_module function
  116. which takes as its argument the mono_aot_module_<ASSEMBLY NAME>_info global symbol
  117. from the object file:
  118. .nf
  119. extern void *mono_aot_module_hello_info;
  120. mono_aot_register_module (mono_aot_module_hello_info);
  121. .fi
  122. .ne
  123. .PP
  124. For more information about AOT, see: http://www.mono-project.com/AOT
  125. .RE
  126. .TP
  127. \fB--attach=[options]\fR
  128. Currently the only option supported by this command line argument is
  129. \fBdisable\fR which disables the attach functionality.
  130. .TP
  131. \fB--full-aot\fR
  132. This is an experimental flag that instructs the Mono runtime to not
  133. generate any code at runtime and depend exclusively on the code
  134. generated from using mono --aot=full previously. This is useful for
  135. platforms that do not permit dynamic code generation.
  136. .Sp
  137. Notice that this feature will abort execution at runtime if a codepath
  138. in your program, or Mono's class libraries attempts to generate code
  139. dynamically. You should test your software upfront and make sure that
  140. you do not use any dynamic features.
  141. .TP
  142. \fB--config filename\fR
  143. Load the specified configuration file instead of the default one(s).
  144. The default files are /etc/mono/config and ~/.mono/config or the file
  145. specified in the MONO_CONFIG environment variable, if set. See the
  146. mono-config(5) man page for details on the format of this file.
  147. .TP
  148. \fB--desktop\fR
  149. Configures the virtual machine to be better suited for desktop
  150. applications. Currently this sets the GC system to avoid expanding
  151. the heap as much as possible at the expense of slowing down garbage
  152. collection a bit.
  153. .TP
  154. \fB--help\fR, \fB-h\fR
  155. Displays usage instructions.
  156. .TP
  157. \fB--optimize=MODE\fR, \fB-O=MODE\fR
  158. MODE is a comma separated list of optimizations. They also allow
  159. optimizations to be turned off by prefixing the optimization name with
  160. a minus sign.
  161. .Sp
  162. In general, Mono has been tuned to use the default set of flags,
  163. before using these flags for a deployment setting, you might want to
  164. actually measure the benefits of using them.
  165. .Sp
  166. The following optimizations are implemented:
  167. .nf
  168. all Turn on all optimizations
  169. peephole Peephole postpass
  170. branch Branch optimizations
  171. inline Inline method calls
  172. cfold Constant folding
  173. consprop Constant propagation
  174. copyprop Copy propagation
  175. deadce Dead code elimination
  176. linears Linear scan global reg allocation
  177. cmov Conditional moves [arch-dependency]
  178. shared Emit per-domain code
  179. sched Instruction scheduling
  180. intrins Intrinsic method implementations
  181. tailc Tail recursion and tail calls
  182. loop Loop related optimizations
  183. fcmov Fast x86 FP compares [arch-dependency]
  184. leaf Leaf procedures optimizations
  185. aot Usage of Ahead Of Time compiled code
  186. precomp Precompile all methods before executing Main
  187. abcrem Array bound checks removal
  188. ssapre SSA based Partial Redundancy Elimination
  189. sse2 SSE2 instructions on x86 [arch-dependency]
  190. gshared Enable generic code sharing.
  191. .fi
  192. .Sp
  193. For example, to enable all the optimization but dead code
  194. elimination and inlining, you can use:
  195. .nf
  196. -O=all,-deadce,-inline
  197. .fi
  198. .Sp
  199. The flags that are flagged with [arch-dependency] indicate that the
  200. given option if used in combination with Ahead of Time compilation
  201. (--aot flag) would produce pre-compiled code that will depend on the
  202. current CPU and might not be safely moved to another computer.
  203. .TP
  204. \fB--runtime=VERSION\fR
  205. Mono supports different runtime versions. The version used depends on the program
  206. that is being run or on its configuration file (named program.exe.config). This option
  207. can be used to override such autodetection, by forcing a different runtime version
  208. to be used. Note that this should only be used to select a later compatible runtime
  209. version than the one the program was compiled against. A typical usage is for
  210. running a 1.1 program on a 2.0 version:
  211. .nf
  212. mono --runtime=v2.0.50727 program.exe
  213. .fi
  214. .TP
  215. \fB--security\fR, \fB--security=mode\fR
  216. Activate the security manager, a currently experimental feature in
  217. Mono and it is OFF by default. The new code verifier can be enabled
  218. with this option as well.
  219. .RS
  220. .ne 8
  221. .PP
  222. Using security without parameters is equivalent as calling it with the
  223. "cas" parameter.
  224. .PP
  225. The following modes are supported:
  226. .TP
  227. .I cas
  228. This allows mono to support declarative security attributes,
  229. e.g. execution of Code Access Security (CAS) or non-CAS demands.
  230. .TP
  231. .I core-clr
  232. Enables the core-clr security system, typically used for
  233. Moonlight/Silverlight applications. It provides a much simpler
  234. security system than CAS, see http://www.mono-project.com/Moonlight
  235. for more details and links to the descriptions of this new system.
  236. .TP
  237. .I validil
  238. Enables the new verifier and performs basic verification for code
  239. validity. In this mode, unsafe code and P/Invoke are allowed. This
  240. mode provides a better safety guarantee but it is still possible
  241. for managed code to crash Mono.
  242. .TP
  243. .I verifiable
  244. Enables the new verifier and performs full verification of the code
  245. being executed. It only allows verifiable code to be executed.
  246. Unsafe code is not allowed but P/Invoke is. This mode should
  247. not allow managed code to crash mono. The verification is not as
  248. strict as ECMA 335 standard in order to stay compatible with the MS
  249. runtime.
  250. .PP
  251. The security system acts on user code: code contained in mscorlib or
  252. the global assembly cache is always trusted.
  253. .ne
  254. .RE
  255. .TP
  256. \fB--server\fR
  257. Configures the virtual machine to be better suited for server
  258. operations (currently, a no-op).
  259. .TP
  260. \fB--verify-all\fR
  261. Verifies mscorlib and assemblies in the global
  262. assembly cache for valid IL, and all user code for IL
  263. verifiability.
  264. This is different from \fB--security\fR's verifiable
  265. or validil in that these options only check user code and skip
  266. mscorlib and assemblies located on the global assembly cache.
  267. .TP
  268. \fB-V\fR, \fB--version\fR
  269. Prints JIT version information (system configuration, release number
  270. and branch names if available).
  271. .SH DEVELOPMENT OPTIONS
  272. The following options are used to help when developing a JITed application.
  273. .TP
  274. \fB--debug\fR, \fB--debug=OPTIONS\fR
  275. Turns on the debugging mode in the runtime. If an assembly was
  276. compiled with debugging information, it will produce line number
  277. information for stack traces.
  278. .RS
  279. .ne 8
  280. .PP
  281. The optional OPTIONS argument is a comma separated list of debugging
  282. options. These options are turned off by default since they generate
  283. much larger and slower code at runtime.
  284. .TP
  285. The following options are supported:
  286. .TP
  287. .I casts
  288. Produces a detailed error when throwing a InvalidCastException. This
  289. option needs to be enabled as this generates more verbose code at
  290. execution time.
  291. .TP
  292. .I mdb-optimizations
  293. Disable some JIT optimizations which are usually only disabled when
  294. running inside the debugger. This can be helpful if you want to attach
  295. to the running process with mdb.
  296. .ne
  297. .RE
  298. .TP
  299. \fB--profile[=profiler[:profiler_args]]\fR
  300. Turns on profiling. For more information about profiling applications
  301. and code coverage see the sections "PROFILING" and "CODE COVERAGE"
  302. below.
  303. .TP
  304. \fB--trace[=expression]\fR
  305. Shows method names as they are invoked. By default all methods are
  306. traced.
  307. .Sp
  308. The trace can be customized to include or exclude methods, classes or
  309. assemblies. A trace expression is a comma separated list of targets,
  310. each target can be prefixed with a minus sign to turn off a particular
  311. target. The words `program', `all' and `disabled' have special
  312. meaning. `program' refers to the main program being executed, and
  313. `all' means all the method calls.
  314. .Sp
  315. The `disabled' option is used to start up with tracing disabled. It
  316. can be enabled at a later point in time in the program by sending the
  317. SIGUSR2 signal to the runtime.
  318. .Sp
  319. Assemblies are specified by their name, for example, to trace all
  320. calls in the System assembly, use:
  321. .nf
  322. mono --trace=System app.exe
  323. .fi
  324. Classes are specified with the T: prefix. For example, to trace all
  325. calls to the System.String class, use:
  326. .nf
  327. mono --trace=T:System.String app.exe
  328. .fi
  329. And individual methods are referenced with the M: prefix, and the
  330. standard method notation:
  331. .nf
  332. mono --trace=M:System.Console:WriteLine app.exe
  333. .fi
  334. As previously noted, various rules can be specified at once:
  335. .nf
  336. mono --trace=T:System.String,T:System.Random app.exe
  337. .fi
  338. You can exclude pieces, the next example traces calls to
  339. System.String except for the System.String:Concat method.
  340. .nf
  341. mono --trace=T:System.String,-M:System.String:Concat
  342. .fi
  343. Finally, namespaces can be specified using the N: prefix:
  344. .nf
  345. mono --trace=N:System.Xml
  346. .fi
  347. .TP
  348. \fB--no-x86-stack-align\fR
  349. Don't align stack frames on the x86 architecture. By default, Mono
  350. aligns stack frames to 16 bytes on x86, so that local floating point
  351. and SIMD variables can be properly aligned. This option turns off the
  352. alignment, which usually saves one intruction per call, but might
  353. result in significantly lower floating point and SIMD performance.
  354. .SH JIT MAINTAINER OPTIONS
  355. The maintainer options are only used by those developing the runtime
  356. itself, and not typically of interest to runtime users or developers.
  357. .TP
  358. \fB--break method\fR
  359. Inserts a breakpoint before the method whose name is `method'
  360. (namespace.class:methodname). Use `Main' as method name to insert a
  361. breakpoint on the application's main method.
  362. .TP
  363. \fB--breakonex\fR
  364. Inserts a breakpoint on exceptions. This allows you to debug your
  365. application with a native debugger when an exception is thrown.
  366. .TP
  367. \fB--compile name\fR
  368. This compiles a method (namespace.name:methodname), this is used for
  369. testing the compiler performance or to examine the output of the code
  370. generator.
  371. .TP
  372. \fB--compileall\fR
  373. Compiles all the methods in an assembly. This is used to test the
  374. compiler performance or to examine the output of the code generator
  375. .TP
  376. \fB--graph=TYPE METHOD\fR
  377. This generates a postscript file with a graph with the details about
  378. the specified method (namespace.name:methodname). This requires `dot'
  379. and ghostview to be installed (it expects Ghostview to be called
  380. "gv").
  381. .Sp
  382. The following graphs are available:
  383. .nf
  384. cfg Control Flow Graph (CFG)
  385. dtree Dominator Tree
  386. code CFG showing code
  387. ssa CFG showing code after SSA translation
  388. optcode CFG showing code after IR optimizations
  389. .fi
  390. .Sp
  391. Some graphs will only be available if certain optimizations are turned
  392. on.
  393. .TP
  394. \fB--ncompile\fR
  395. Instruct the runtime on the number of times that the method specified
  396. by --compile (or all the methods if --compileall is used) to be
  397. compiled. This is used for testing the code generator performance.
  398. .TP
  399. \fB--stats\fR
  400. Displays information about the work done by the runtime during the
  401. execution of an application.
  402. .TP
  403. \fB--wapi=hps|semdel\fR
  404. Perform maintenance of the process shared data.
  405. .Sp
  406. semdel will delete the global semaphore.
  407. .Sp
  408. hps will list the currently used handles.
  409. .TP
  410. \fB-v\fR, \fB--verbose\fR
  411. Increases the verbosity level, each time it is listed, increases the
  412. verbosity level to include more information (including, for example,
  413. a disassembly of the native code produced, code selector info etc.).
  414. .SH ATTACH SUPPORT
  415. The Mono runtime allows external processes to attach to a running
  416. process and load assemblies into the running program. To attach to
  417. the process, a special protocol is implemented in the Mono.Management
  418. assembly.
  419. .PP
  420. With this support it is possible to load assemblies that have an entry
  421. point (they are created with -target:exe or -target:winexe) to be
  422. loaded and executed in the Mono process.
  423. .PP
  424. The code is loaded into the root domain, and it starts execution on
  425. the special runtime attach thread. The attached program should
  426. create its own threads and return after invocation.
  427. .PP
  428. This support allows for example debugging applications by having the
  429. csharp shell attach to running processes.
  430. .SH PROFILING
  431. The mono runtime includes a profiler that can be used to explore
  432. various performance related problems in your application. The
  433. profiler is activated by passing the --profile command line argument
  434. to the Mono runtime, the format is:
  435. .nf
  436. --profile[=profiler[:profiler_args]]
  437. .fi
  438. Mono has a built-in profiler called 'default' (and is also the default
  439. if no arguments are specified), but developers can write custom
  440. profilers, see the section "CUSTOM PROFILERS" for more details.
  441. .PP
  442. If a
  443. .I profiler
  444. is not specified, the default profiler is used.
  445. .Sp
  446. The
  447. .I profiler_args
  448. is a profiler-specific string of options for the profiler itself.
  449. .Sp
  450. The default profiler accepts the following options 'alloc' to profile
  451. memory consumption by the application; 'time' to profile the time
  452. spent on each routine; 'jit' to collect time spent JIT-compiling methods
  453. and 'stat' to perform sample statistical profiling.
  454. If no options are provided the default is 'alloc,time,jit'.
  455. .PP
  456. By default the
  457. profile data is printed to stdout: to change this, use the 'file=filename'
  458. option to output the data to filename.
  459. .Sp
  460. For example:
  461. .nf
  462. mono --profile program.exe
  463. .fi
  464. .Sp
  465. That will run the program with the default profiler and will do time
  466. and allocation profiling.
  467. .Sp
  468. .nf
  469. mono --profile=default:stat,alloc,file=prof.out program.exe
  470. .fi
  471. Will do sample statistical profiling and allocation profiling on
  472. program.exe. The profile data is put in prof.out.
  473. .Sp
  474. Note that the statistical profiler has a very low overhead and should
  475. be the preferred profiler to use (for better output use the full path
  476. to the mono binary when running and make sure you have installed the
  477. addr2line utility that comes from the binutils package).
  478. .SH LOGGING PROFILER
  479. .PP
  480. The
  481. .I logging profiler
  482. will eventually replace the default profiler as it is more complete
  483. and encompasses the functionality of all the other profilers for Mono.
  484. It supports the following execution modes:
  485. .IP
  486. .I Statistical:
  487. the program instruction pointer is periodically sampled (it works also with
  488. unmanaged functions). If call chains are requested, for each sample the
  489. profiler gets a partial stack trace (up to a desired depth) so that
  490. caller-callee information is available.
  491. .IP
  492. .I Instrumenting:
  493. each method enter and exit is logged with a timestamp; further processing of
  494. the data can show the methods that took the longer to execute, with complete
  495. accounting for callers and callees. However, this way of profiling is rather
  496. intrusive and slows down the application significantly.
  497. .IP
  498. .I Allocation:
  499. each allocation is logged.
  500. .IP
  501. .I Allocation summary:
  502. shows, for each collection, a summary of the heap contents broken down by
  503. class (for each class the number of allocated and released objects is
  504. given, together with their aggregated size in bytes).
  505. .IP
  506. .I Heap snapshot mode:
  507. dumps the whole heap contents at every collection (or at user specified
  508. collections). It is also possible to request a collection and snapshot dump
  509. with a signal.
  510. .PP
  511. Moreover, other events can be logged and analyzed, like jit time for each
  512. method, load and unload for assemblies, modules and and individual classes,
  513. and appdomain and thread creation and destruction.
  514. .PP
  515. Instead of reporting the collected
  516. information at the end of the execution of the program, this profiler logs
  517. all the events periodically into a file during program execution.
  518. To minimize the performance impact with multi-threaded applications,
  519. the logging uses per-thread buffers that are routinely saved to disk.
  520. .PP
  521. The output file contains compressed events, to process the data you should
  522. use tools like the "Mono.Profiler" tool provided on the Mono SVN
  523. repository.
  524. .PP
  525. This profiler is activated passing the \fB--profile=logging\fR option to
  526. the mono runtime, and is controlled attaching further options, like
  527. \fB--profile=logging:statistical\fR for doing statistical profiling (multiple
  528. options are separated by commas).
  529. .PP
  530. As a quick primer, here are a few examples of the most common usage modes:
  531. .PP
  532. To write the resulting data to "mydata.mprof" (defaults to statistical
  533. profiling):
  534. .nf
  535. mono --profile=logging:output=mydata.mprof program.exe
  536. .fi
  537. .PP
  538. To perform statistical profiling, inspecting call chains up to depth 8:
  539. .nf
  540. mono --profile=logging:statistical=8 program.exe
  541. .fi
  542. .PP
  543. To profile allocations (by default the call stack will be analized for
  544. each allocation, producing detailed caller method attribution infornation):
  545. .nf
  546. mono --profile=logging:allocations program.exe
  547. .fi
  548. .PP
  549. To profile garbage collection activity at a high level (collection time and objects freed
  550. at each collection for each class are reported, but heap snapshots are not saved to disk):
  551. .nf
  552. mono --profile=logging:allocations-summary program.exe
  553. .fi
  554. .PP
  555. To perform heap profiling taking heap snapshots:
  556. .nf
  557. mono --profile=logging:heap=all program.exe
  558. mono --profile=logging:heap=<signal> program.exe
  559. .fi
  560. If "all" is specified, a heap snapshot is taken at each collection.
  561. If, instead, a signal name or number is given (one of SIGUSR1, SIGUSR2 and
  562. SIGPROF, remembering that SIGPROF is not compatible with the statistical
  563. profiler), a garbage collection is forced and a snapshot is taken every
  564. time the signal is received.
  565. Heap profiling also enables full allocation profiling (with call stacks),
  566. and each allocation can be related to its corresponding object in the
  567. snapshots, enabling investigations like "find all objects of a given class
  568. allocated by a given method and still live at a given collection, and then
  569. find all objects referencing them".
  570. .PP
  571. Then you would need to invoke the decoder \fImprof-decoder(1)\fR
  572. on the output file to see the profiling results, or to examine heap
  573. snapshots and allocations in detail \fImprof-heap-viewer(1)\fR.
  574. .PP
  575. The operating modes described above are the default ones, and are sufficient
  576. to use the profiler.
  577. .PP
  578. To further customize the profiler behavior there are more options, described
  579. below.
  580. These options can be individually enabled and disabled prefixing them with
  581. an (optional) '+' character or a '-' character.
  582. For instance, the "allocations" option by default records also the full call
  583. stack at each allocation.
  584. If only the caller is wanted, one should use "allocations,-save-allocation-stack",
  585. or to disable call tracking completely (making the profiler less intrusive)
  586. "allocations,-save-allocation-caller,-save-allocation-stack".
  587. In practice the "allocation" option by default behaves like
  588. "allocations,save-allocation-caller,save-allocation-stack", but the user can
  589. tune this to his needs.
  590. .PP
  591. These are all the available options, organized by category:
  592. .PP
  593. \fBExecution profiling modes\fR
  594. .RS
  595. .ne 8
  596. .TP
  597. \fIstatistical\fR, \fIstat\fR or \fIs\fR
  598. Performs statistical profiling. This is a lightweight profiling
  599. mechanism and it has a much lower overhead than the \fIenter-leave\fR
  600. profiling as it works by sampling where the program is spending its
  601. time by using a timer.
  602. If specified with \fIs=<number>\fR, also inspect call chains up to level
  603. <number>.
  604. .TP
  605. \fIenter-leave\fR, \fIcalls\fR or \fIc\fR
  606. Measure the time spent inside each method call, this is done by
  607. logging the time when a method enters and when the method leaves.
  608. This can be a time consuming operation.
  609. .TP
  610. \fIjit\fR, \fIj\fR
  611. Collect information about time spent by the JIT engine compiling
  612. methods.
  613. .ne
  614. .RE
  615. .PP
  616. \fBAllocation profiling modes\fR
  617. .RS
  618. .ne 8
  619. .TP
  620. \fIallocations\fR, \fIalloc\fR or \fIa\fR
  621. Collect information about each allocation (object class and size).
  622. By default this also implies "+save-allocation-caller" and
  623. "+save-allocation-stack".
  624. .TP
  625. \fIsave-allocation-caller\fR, \fIsac\fR
  626. Save the direct caller of each allocation. The profiler filters out wrapper
  627. methods, and also recognizes if the allocation has been performed by the
  628. runtime while jitting a method.
  629. .TP
  630. \fIsave-allocation-stack\fR, \fIsas\fR
  631. Save the full managed execution stack at each allocation.
  632. While the "sac" option saves the direct caller, this one records the whole
  633. stack trace.
  634. Note that in the call stack the wrapper methods are not filtered out.
  635. Anyway the "sac" and "sas" options can be combined, and the decoder will
  636. attribute the allocation to the correct method even if the wrapper is at the
  637. top of the stack trace.
  638. .TP
  639. \fIallocations-summary\fR or \fIas\fR
  640. At each collection dump a summary
  641. of the heap contents (for each class, the number and collective size of all
  642. live and freed heap objects). This very lightweight compared to full heap
  643. snapshots.
  644. .TP
  645. \fIunreachable\fR, \fIfree\fR or \fIf\fR
  646. Performs a lightweight profile of the garbage collector. On each
  647. collection performed by the GC, the list of unreachable objects is
  648. recorded, and for each object the class and size is provided. This
  649. information can be used to compute the heap size broken down by class
  650. (combined with "a" can give the same information of "as", but the log
  651. file contains info about each individual object, while in "as" the
  652. processing is done directly at runtime and the log file contains only
  653. the summarized data broken down by class).
  654. .TP
  655. \fIgc\fR or \fIg\fR
  656. Measure the time spent in each collection, and also trace heap resizes.
  657. .TP
  658. \fIheap-shot\fR, \fIheap\fR or \fIh\fR
  659. Performs full heap profiling. In this case on each
  660. collection a full heap snapshot is recorded to disk.
  661. Inside the snapshots, each object reference is still represented so
  662. that it's possible to investigate who is responsible for keeping objects
  663. alive.
  664. .PP
  665. The actual production of heap snapshots could produce large log files,
  666. so it can be controlled in three ways:
  667. .TP
  668. \fIgc-dumps=N\fR, \fIgc-d=N\fR, \fIgcd=N\fR
  669. states the number of snapshots that must be dumped (since the application
  670. starts). Zero means no dumps at all, -1 means dump at all collections.
  671. .TP
  672. \fIgc-signal=<signal>\fR, \fIgc-s\fR or \fIgcs\fR
  673. (where <signal> is one of "SIGUSR1", "SIGUSR2", or "SIGPROF")
  674. specifies a signal that will immediately trigger a collection and a dump.
  675. .TP
  676. \fIgc-commands=FILE\fR, \fIgc-c=FILE\fR or \fIgcc=FILE\fR
  677. specify a "command file". The file must contain an integer value in ASCII
  678. form, and the profiler will stat it at every collection.
  679. If it has been modified it will interpret its contents as a \fIgcd=N\fR
  680. option value, and dump the required number of snapshots from that moment
  681. onwards.
  682. If the file is present at application startup it takes precedence over an
  683. eventual \fIgcd=N\fR option.
  684. .ne
  685. .RE
  686. .PP
  687. \fBProfiler activity control\fR
  688. .RS
  689. .ne 8
  690. .TP
  691. \fIoutput=FILE\fR, \fIout=FILE\fR or \fIo=FILE\fR
  692. Use this option to provide the output file name for the profile log.
  693. If this option is not specified, it will default to "<program-name>.mprof".
  694. .TP
  695. \fIoutput-suffix=SUFFIX\fR, \fIsuffix=SUFFIX\fR or \fIos=SUFFIX\fR: makes
  696. the output file name equals to "<program-name>-SUFFIX.mprof".
  697. .TP
  698. \fIstart-enabled\fR or \fIse\fR: start with the profiler active
  699. (which is the default).
  700. .TP
  701. \fIstart-disabled\fR or \fIsd\fR: start with the profiler inactive.
  702. .TP
  703. \fItoggle-signal=<SIGNAL>\fR or \fIts=<SIGNAL>\fR (where <SIGNAL>
  704. is one of SIGUSR1, SIGUSR2 or SIGPROF): Choose a signal that will be used to
  705. toggle the profiler activity on and off. This way you can decide to profile
  706. only portions of the applicatopn lifetime (for instance, you can decide to
  707. avoid profiling an initial setup phase using \fIsd\fR, and enable the
  708. profiler later delivering the signal to the application).
  709. .TP
  710. \fIforce-accurate-timer\fR (or \fIfac\fR): the profiler by default uses
  711. rtdsc to acquire timestamps for frequent events, but this can be imprecise;
  712. using this option you force the use of "gettimeofday" at every event, which
  713. is more accurate but much slower.
  714. .ne
  715. .RE
  716. .PP
  717. \fBInternal buffer sizes\fR
  718. .RS
  719. .ne 8
  720. .TP
  721. \fIper-thread-buffer-size=N\fR, \fItbs=N\fR
  722. Use to specify the number of events that a thread buffer
  723. can hold. When the thread buffer is full, a log block is
  724. written to disk.
  725. .Sp
  726. This defaults to tbs=10000.
  727. .TP
  728. \fIstatistical-thread-buffer-size=N\fR, \fIsbs=N\fR
  729. The number of statistical samples that
  730. are held in memory before they are dumped to disk (the system does
  731. double-buffering and the statistical samples are written by a helper
  732. thread, so the statistical profiler never stops and is able to profile
  733. the profiler itself).
  734. .Sp
  735. This defaults to sbs=10000.
  736. .TP
  737. \fIwrite-buffer-size\fR, \fIwbs\fR
  738. Specifies the size in bytes of the internal write buffers.
  739. .Sp
  740. This defaults to wbs=1024.
  741. .ne
  742. .RE
  743. .PP
  744. In its current state, this profiler can also perform heap analysis (like
  745. heap-shot), and the decoder is already able to read the data, however
  746. the user interface for this feature is experimental (the
  747. \fImprof-heap-viewer\fR tool in the mono-tools module).
  748. .PP
  749. Another known issue is that if the timer is not strictly monotonic (like
  750. rtdsc), differences between times can underflow (they are handled as
  751. unsigned integers) and weird numbers can show up in the logs.
  752. .PP
  753. Finally, it can happen that when exceptions are thrown the profiler temporarily
  754. loses track of the execution stack and misattributes the caller for a few
  755. allocations (and method execution time).
  756. .PP
  757. More explanations are provided here: "http://www.mono-project.com/LoggingProfiler".
  758. .SH EXTERNAL PROFILERS
  759. There are a number of external profilers that have been developed for
  760. Mono, we will update this section to contain the profilers.
  761. .PP
  762. The heap Shot profiler can track all live objects, and references to
  763. these objects, and includes a GUI tool, this is our recommended
  764. profiler.
  765. To install you must download the profiler
  766. from Mono's SVN:
  767. .nf
  768. svn co svn://anonsvn.mono-project.com/source/trunk/heap-shot
  769. cd heap-shot
  770. ./autogen
  771. make
  772. make install
  773. .fi
  774. .PP
  775. See the included documentation for details on using it.
  776. .PP
  777. The Live Type profiler shows at every GC iteration all of the live
  778. objects of a given type. To install you must download the profiler
  779. from Mono's SVN:
  780. .nf
  781. svn co svn://anonsvn.mono-project.com/source/trunk/heap-prof
  782. cd heap-prof
  783. ./autogen
  784. make
  785. make install
  786. .fi
  787. .PP
  788. To use the profiler, execute:
  789. .nf
  790. mono --profile=desc-heap program.exe
  791. .fi
  792. .PP
  793. The output of this profiler looks like this:
  794. .nf
  795. Checkpoint at 102 for heap-resize
  796. System.MonoType : 708
  797. System.Threading.Thread : 352
  798. System.String : 3230
  799. System.String[] : 104
  800. Gnome.ModuleInfo : 112
  801. System.Object[] : 160
  802. System.Collections.Hashtable : 96
  803. System.Int32[] : 212
  804. System.Collections.Hashtable+Slot[] : 296
  805. System.Globalization.CultureInfo : 108
  806. System.Globalization.NumberFormatInfo : 144
  807. .fi
  808. .PP
  809. The first line describes the iteration number for the GC, in this case
  810. checkpoint 102.
  811. .PP
  812. Then on each line the type is displayed as well as the number of bytes
  813. that are being consumed by live instances of this object.
  814. .PP
  815. The AOT profiler is used to feed back information to the AOT compiler
  816. about how to order code based on the access patterns for pages. To
  817. use it, use:
  818. .nf
  819. mono --profile=aot program.exe
  820. .fi
  821. The output of this profile can be fed back into Mono's AOT compiler to
  822. order the functions on the disk to produce precompiled images that
  823. have methods in sequential pages.
  824. .SH CUSTOM PROFILERS
  825. Mono provides a mechanism for loading other profiling modules which in
  826. the form of shared libraries. These profiling modules can hook up to
  827. various parts of the Mono runtime to gather information about the code
  828. being executed.
  829. .PP
  830. To use a third party profiler you must pass the name of the profiler
  831. to Mono, like this:
  832. .nf
  833. mono --profile=custom program.exe
  834. .fi
  835. .PP
  836. In the above sample Mono will load the user defined profiler from the
  837. shared library `mono-profiler-custom.so'. This profiler module must
  838. be on your dynamic linker library path.
  839. .PP
  840. A list of other third party profilers is available from Mono's web
  841. site (www.mono-project.com/Performance_Tips)
  842. .PP
  843. Custom profiles are written as shared libraries. The shared library
  844. must be called `mono-profiler-NAME.so' where `NAME' is the name of
  845. your profiler.
  846. .PP
  847. For a sample of how to write your own custom profiler look in the
  848. Mono source tree for in the samples/profiler.c.
  849. .SH CODE COVERAGE
  850. Mono ships with a code coverage module. This module is activated by
  851. using the Mono --profile=cov option. The format is:
  852. \fB--profile=cov[:assembly-name[/namespace]] test-suite.exe\fR
  853. .PP
  854. By default code coverage will default to all the assemblies loaded,
  855. you can limit this by specifying the assembly name, for example to
  856. perform code coverage in the routines of your program use, for example
  857. the following command line limits the code coverage to routines in the
  858. "demo" assembly:
  859. .nf
  860. mono --profile=cov:demo demo.exe
  861. .fi
  862. .PP
  863. Notice that the
  864. .I assembly-name
  865. does not include the extension.
  866. .PP
  867. You can further restrict the code coverage output by specifying a
  868. namespace:
  869. .nf
  870. mono --profile=cov:demo/My.Utilities demo.exe
  871. .fi
  872. .PP
  873. Which will only perform code coverage in the given assembly and
  874. namespace.
  875. .PP
  876. Typical output looks like this:
  877. .nf
  878. Not covered: Class:.ctor ()
  879. Not covered: Class:A ()
  880. Not covered: Driver:.ctor ()
  881. Not covered: Driver:method ()
  882. Partial coverage: Driver:Main ()
  883. offset 0x000a
  884. .fi
  885. .PP
  886. The offsets displayed are IL offsets.
  887. .PP
  888. A more powerful coverage tool is available in the module `monocov'.
  889. See the monocov(1) man page for details.
  890. .SH DEBUGGING AIDS
  891. To debug managed applications, you can use the
  892. .B mdb
  893. command, a command line debugger.
  894. .PP
  895. It is possible to obtain a stack trace of all the active threads in
  896. Mono by sending the QUIT signal to Mono, you can do this from the
  897. command line, like this:
  898. .nf
  899. kill -QUIT pid
  900. .fi
  901. Where pid is the Process ID of the Mono process you want to examine.
  902. The process will continue running afterwards, but its state is not
  903. guaranteed.
  904. .PP
  905. .B Important:
  906. this is a last-resort mechanism for debugging applications and should
  907. not be used to monitor or probe a production application. The
  908. integrity of the runtime after sending this signal is not guaranteed
  909. and the application might crash or terminate at any given point
  910. afterwards.
  911. .PP
  912. The \fB--debug=casts\FR option can be used to get more detailed
  913. information for Invalid Cast operations, it will provide information
  914. about the types involved.
  915. .PP
  916. You can use the MONO_LOG_LEVEL and MONO_LOG_MASK environment variables
  917. to get verbose debugging output about the execution of your
  918. application within Mono.
  919. .PP
  920. The
  921. .I MONO_LOG_LEVEL
  922. environment variable if set, the logging level is changed to the set
  923. value. Possible values are "error", "critical", "warning", "message",
  924. "info", "debug". The default value is "error". Messages with a logging
  925. level greater then or equal to the log level will be printed to
  926. stdout/stderr.
  927. .PP
  928. Use "info" to track the dynamic loading of assemblies.
  929. .PP
  930. .PP
  931. Use the
  932. .I MONO_LOG_MASK
  933. environment variable to limit the extent of the messages you get:
  934. If set, the log mask is changed to the set value. Possible values are
  935. "asm" (assembly loader), "type", "dll" (native library loader), "gc"
  936. (garbage collector), "cfg" (config file loader), "aot" (precompiler) and "all".
  937. The default value is "all". Changing the mask value allows you to display only
  938. messages for a certain component. You can use multiple masks by comma
  939. separating them. For example to see config file messages and assembly loader
  940. messages set you mask to "asm,cfg".
  941. .PP
  942. The following is a common use to track down problems with P/Invoke:
  943. .nf
  944. $ MONO_LOG_LEVEL="debug" MONO_LOG_MASK="dll" mono glue.exe
  945. .fi
  946. .PP
  947. .SH SERIALIZATION
  948. Mono's XML serialization engine by default will use a reflection-based
  949. approach to serialize which might be slow for continuous processing
  950. (web service applications). The serialization engine will determine
  951. when a class must use a hand-tuned serializer based on a few
  952. parameters and if needed it will produce a customized C# serializer
  953. for your types at runtime. This customized serializer then gets
  954. dynamically loaded into your application.
  955. .PP
  956. You can control this with the MONO_XMLSERIALIZER_THS environment
  957. variable.
  958. .PP
  959. The possible values are
  960. .B `no'
  961. to disable the use of a C# customized
  962. serializer, or an integer that is the minimum number of uses before
  963. the runtime will produce a custom serializer (0 will produce a
  964. custom serializer on the first access, 50 will produce a serializer on
  965. the 50th use). Mono will fallback to an interpreted serializer if the
  966. serializer generation somehow fails. This behavior can be disabled
  967. by setting the option
  968. .B `nofallback'
  969. (for example: MONO_XMLSERIALIZER_THS=0,nofallback).
  970. .SH ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
  971. .TP
  972. \fBGC_DONT_GC\fR
  973. Turns off the garbage collection in Mono. This should be only used
  974. for debugging purposes
  975. .TP
  976. \fBMONO_AOT_CACHE\fR
  977. If set, this variable will instruct Mono to ahead-of-time compile new
  978. assemblies on demand and store the result into a cache in
  979. ~/.mono/aot-cache.
  980. .TP
  981. \fBMONO_CFG_DIR\fR
  982. If set, this variable overrides the default system configuration directory
  983. ($PREFIX/etc). It's used to locate machine.config file.
  984. .TP
  985. \fBMONO_COM\fR
  986. Sets the style of COM interop. If the value of this variable is "MS"
  987. Mono will use string marhsalling routines from the liboleaut32 for the
  988. BSTR type library, any other values will use the mono-builtin BSTR
  989. string marshalling.
  990. .TP
  991. \fBMONO_CONFIG\fR
  992. If set, this variable overrides the default runtime configuration file
  993. ($PREFIX/etc/mono/config). The --config command line options overrides the
  994. environment variable.
  995. .TP
  996. \fBMONO_DEBUG\fR
  997. If set, enables some features of the runtime useful for debugging.
  998. This variable should contain a comma separated list of debugging options.
  999. Currently, the following options are supported:
  1000. .RS
  1001. .ne 8
  1002. .TP
  1003. \fBbreak-on-unverified\fR
  1004. If this variable is set, when the Mono VM runs into a verification
  1005. problem, instead of throwing an exception it will break into the
  1006. debugger. This is useful when debugging verifier problems
  1007. .TP
  1008. \fBcollect-pagefault-stats\fR
  1009. Collects information about pagefaults. This is used internally to
  1010. track the number of page faults produced to load metadata. To display
  1011. this information you must use this option with "--stats" command line
  1012. option.
  1013. .TP
  1014. \fBdont-free-domains\fR
  1015. This is an Optimization for multi-AppDomain applications (most
  1016. commonly ASP.NET applications). Due to internal limitations Mono,
  1017. Mono by default does not use typed allocations on multi-appDomain
  1018. applications as they could leak memory when a domain is unloaded.
  1019. .Sp
  1020. Although this is a fine default, for applications that use more than
  1021. on AppDomain heavily (for example, ASP.NET applications) it is worth
  1022. trading off the small leaks for the increased performance
  1023. (additionally, since ASP.NET applications are not likely going to
  1024. unload the application domains on production systems, it is worth
  1025. using this feature).
  1026. .TP
  1027. \fBhandle-sigint\fR
  1028. Captures the interrupt signal (Control-C) and displays a stack trace
  1029. when pressed. Useful to find out where the program is executing at a
  1030. given point. This only displays the stack trace of a single thread.
  1031. .TP
  1032. \fBkeep-delegates\fR
  1033. This option will leak delegate trampolines that are no longer
  1034. referenced as to present the user with more information about a
  1035. delegate misuse. Basically a delegate instance might be created,
  1036. passed to unmanaged code, and no references kept in managed code,
  1037. which will garbage collect the code. With this option it is possible
  1038. to track down the source of the problems.
  1039. .TP
  1040. \fBno-gdb-backtrace\fR
  1041. This option will disable the GDB backtrace emitted by the runtime
  1042. after a SIGSEGV or SIGABRT in unmanaged code.
  1043. .ne
  1044. .RE
  1045. .TP
  1046. \fBMONO_DISABLE_AIO\fR
  1047. If set, tells mono NOT to attempt using native asynchronous I/O services. In
  1048. that case, a default select/poll implementation is used. Currently only epoll()
  1049. is supported.
  1050. .TP
  1051. \fBMONO_DISABLE_MANAGED_COLLATION\fR
  1052. If this environment variable is `yes', the runtime uses unmanaged
  1053. collation (which actually means no culture-sensitive collation). It
  1054. internally disables managed collation functionality invoked via the
  1055. members of System.Globalization.CompareInfo class. Collation is
  1056. enabled by default.
  1057. .TP
  1058. \fBMONO_EGD_SOCKET\fR
  1059. For platforms that do not otherwise have a way of obtaining random bytes
  1060. this can be set to the name of a file system socket on which an egd or
  1061. prngd daemon is listening.
  1062. .TP
  1063. \fBMONO_EVENTLOG_TYPE\fR
  1064. Sets the type of event log provider to use (for System.Diagnostics.EventLog).
  1065. .Sp
  1066. Possible values are:
  1067. .RS
  1068. .TP
  1069. .I "local[:path]"
  1070. .Sp
  1071. Persists event logs and entries to the local file system.
  1072. .Sp
  1073. The directory in which to persist the event logs, event sources and entries
  1074. can be specified as part of the value.
  1075. .Sp
  1076. If the path is not explicitly set, it defaults to "/var/lib/mono/eventlog"
  1077. on unix and "%APPDATA%\mono\eventlog" on Windows.
  1078. .TP
  1079. .I "win32"
  1080. .Sp
  1081. .B
  1082. Uses the native win32 API to write events and registers event logs and
  1083. event sources in the registry. This is only available on Windows.
  1084. .Sp
  1085. On Unix, the directory permission for individual event log and event source
  1086. directories is set to 777 (with +t bit) allowing everyone to read and write
  1087. event log entries while only allowing entries to be deleted by the user(s)
  1088. that created them.
  1089. .TP
  1090. .I "null"
  1091. .Sp
  1092. Silently discards any events.
  1093. .ne
  1094. .PP
  1095. The default is "null" on Unix (and versions of Windows before NT), and
  1096. "win32" on Windows NT (and higher).
  1097. .RE
  1098. .TP
  1099. \fBMONO_EXTERNAL_ENCODINGS\fR
  1100. If set, contains a colon-separated list of text encodings to try when
  1101. turning externally-generated text (e.g. command-line arguments or
  1102. filenames) into Unicode. The encoding names come from the list
  1103. provided by iconv, and the special case "default_locale" which refers
  1104. to the current locale's default encoding.
  1105. .IP
  1106. When reading externally-generated text strings UTF-8 is tried first,
  1107. and then this list is tried in order with the first successful
  1108. conversion ending the search. When writing external text (e.g. new
  1109. filenames or arguments to new processes) the first item in this list
  1110. is used, or UTF-8 if the environment variable is not set.
  1111. .IP
  1112. The problem with using MONO_EXTERNAL_ENCODINGS to process your
  1113. files is that it results in a problem: although its possible to get
  1114. the right file name it is not necessarily possible to open the file.
  1115. In general if you have problems with encodings in your filenames you
  1116. should use the "convmv" program.
  1117. .TP
  1118. \fBMONO_GAC_PREFIX\fR
  1119. Provides a prefix the runtime uses to look for Global Assembly Caches.
  1120. Directories are separated by the platform path separator (colons on
  1121. unix). MONO_GAC_PREFIX should point to the top directory of a prefixed
  1122. install. Or to the directory provided in the gacutil /gacdir command. Example:
  1123. .B /home/username/.mono:/usr/local/mono/
  1124. .TP
  1125. \fBMONO_IOMAP\fR
  1126. Enables some filename rewriting support to assist badly-written
  1127. applications that hard-code Windows paths. Set to a colon-separated
  1128. list of "drive" to strip drive letters, or "case" to do
  1129. case-insensitive file matching in every directory in a path. "all"
  1130. enables all rewriting methods. (Backslashes are always mapped to
  1131. slashes if this variable is set to a valid option.)
  1132. .fi
  1133. .Sp
  1134. For example, this would work from the shell:
  1135. .nf
  1136. MONO_IOMAP=drive:case
  1137. export MONO_IOMAP
  1138. .fi
  1139. If you are using mod_mono to host your web applications, you can use
  1140. the
  1141. .B MonoSetEnv
  1142. directive, like this:
  1143. .nf
  1144. MonoSetEnv MONO_IOMAP=all
  1145. .fi
  1146. .TP
  1147. \fBMONO_MANAGED_WATCHER\fR
  1148. If set to "disabled", System.IO.FileSystemWatcher will use a file watcher
  1149. implementation which silently ignores all the watching requests.
  1150. If set to any other value, System.IO.FileSystemWatcher will use the default
  1151. managed implementation (slow). If unset, mono will try to use inotify, FAM,
  1152. Gamin, kevent under Unix systems and native API calls on Windows, falling
  1153. back to the managed implementation on error.
  1154. .TP
  1155. \fBMONO_NO_SMP\fR
  1156. If set causes the mono process to be bound to a single processor. This may be
  1157. useful when debugging or working around race conditions.
  1158. .TP
  1159. \fBMONO_PATH\fR
  1160. Provides a search path to the runtime where to look for library
  1161. files. This is a tool convenient for debugging applications, but
  1162. should not be used by deployed applications as it breaks the assembly
  1163. loader in subtle ways.
  1164. .Sp
  1165. Directories are separated by the platform path separator (colons on unix). Example:
  1166. .B /home/username/lib:/usr/local/mono/lib
  1167. .Sp
  1168. Alternative solutions to MONO_PATH include: installing libraries into
  1169. the Global Assembly Cache (see gacutil(1)) or having the dependent
  1170. libraries side-by-side with the main executable.
  1171. .Sp
  1172. For a complete description of recommended practices for application
  1173. deployment, see the
  1174. http://www.mono-project.com/Guidelines:Application_Deployment page.
  1175. .TP
  1176. \fBMONO_RTC\fR
  1177. Experimental RTC support in the statistical profiler: if the user has
  1178. the permission, more accurate statistics are gathered. The MONO_RTC
  1179. value must be restricted to what the Linux rtc allows: power of two
  1180. from 64 to 8192 Hz. To enable higher frequencies like 4096 Hz, run as root:
  1181. .nf
  1182. echo 4096 > /proc/sys/dev/rtc/max-user-freq
  1183. .fi
  1184. .Sp
  1185. For example:
  1186. .nf
  1187. MONO_RTC=4096 mono --profiler=default:stat program.exe
  1188. .fi
  1189. .TP
  1190. \fBMONO_NO_TLS\fR
  1191. Disable inlining of thread local accesses. Try setting this if you get a segfault
  1192. early on in the execution of mono.
  1193. .TP
  1194. \fBMONO_SHARED_DIR\fR
  1195. If set its the directory where the ".wapi" handle state is stored.
  1196. This is the directory where the Windows I/O Emulation layer stores its
  1197. shared state data (files, events, mutexes, pipes). By default Mono
  1198. will store the ".wapi" directory in the users's home directory.
  1199. .TP
  1200. \fBMONO_SHARED_HOSTNAME\fR
  1201. Uses the string value of this variable as a replacement for the host name when
  1202. creating file names in the ".wapi" directory. This helps if the host name of
  1203. your machine is likely to be changed when a mono application is running or if
  1204. you have a .wapi directory shared among several different computers.
  1205. .Sp
  1206. Mono typically uses the hostname to create the files that are used to
  1207. share state across multiple Mono processes. This is done to support
  1208. home directories that might be shared over the network.
  1209. .TP
  1210. \fBMONO_STRICT_IO_EMULATION\fR
  1211. If set, extra checks are made during IO operations. Currently, this
  1212. includes only advisory locks around file writes.
  1213. .TP
  1214. \fBMONO_DISABLE_SHM\fR
  1215. If set, disables the shared memory files used for cross-process
  1216. handles: process have only private handles. This means that process
  1217. and thread handles are not available to other processes, and named
  1218. mutexes, named events and named semaphores are not visible between
  1219. processes.
  1220. .Sp
  1221. This is can also be enabled by default by passing the
  1222. "--disable-shared-handles" option to configure.
  1223. .TP
  1224. \fBMONO_THEME\fR
  1225. The name of the theme to be used by Windows.Forms. Available themes today
  1226. include "clearlooks", "nice" and "win32".
  1227. .Sp
  1228. The default is "win32".
  1229. .TP
  1230. \fBMONO_TLS_SESSION_CACHE_TIMEOUT\fR
  1231. The time, in seconds, that the SSL/TLS session cache will keep it's entry to
  1232. avoid a new negotiation between the client and a server. Negotiation are very
  1233. CPU intensive so an application-specific custom value may prove useful for
  1234. small embedded systems.
  1235. .Sp
  1236. The default is 180 seconds.
  1237. .TP
  1238. \fBMONO_THREADS_PER_CPU\fR
  1239. The maximum number of threads in the general threadpool will be
  1240. 20 + (MONO_THREADS_PER_CPU * number of CPUs). The default value for this
  1241. variable is 10.
  1242. .TP
  1243. \fBMONO_XMLSERIALIZER_THS\fR
  1244. Controls the threshold for the XmlSerializer to produce a custom
  1245. serializer for a given class instead of using the Reflection-based
  1246. interpreter. The possible values are `no' to disable the use of a
  1247. custom serializer or a number to indicate when the XmlSerializer
  1248. should start serializing. The default value is 50, which means that
  1249. the a custom serializer will be produced on the 50th use.
  1250. .TP
  1251. \fBMONO_XMLSERIALIZER_DEBUG\fR
  1252. Set this value to 1 to prevent the serializer from removing the
  1253. temporary files that are created for fast serialization; This might
  1254. be useful when debugging.
  1255. .TP
  1256. \fBMONO_ASPNET_INHIBIT_SETTINGSMAP\fR
  1257. Mono contains a feature which allows modifying settings in the .config files shipped
  1258. with Mono by using config section mappers. The mappers and the mapping rules are
  1259. defined in the $prefix/etc/mono/2.0/settings.map file and, optionally, in the
  1260. settings.map file found in the top-level directory of your ASP.NET application.
  1261. Both files are read by System.Web on application startup, if they are found at the
  1262. above locations. If you don't want the mapping to be performed you can set this
  1263. variable in your environment before starting the application and no action will
  1264. be taken.
  1265. .SH ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES FOR DEBUGGING
  1266. .TP
  1267. \fBMONO_ASPNET_NODELETE\fR
  1268. If set to any value, temporary source files generated by ASP.NET support
  1269. classes will not be removed. They will be kept in the user's temporary
  1270. directory.
  1271. .TP
  1272. \fBMONO_LOG_LEVEL\fR
  1273. The logging level, possible values are `error', `critical', `warning',
  1274. `message', `info' and `debug'. See the DEBUGGING section for more
  1275. details.
  1276. .TP
  1277. \fBMONO_LOG_MASK\fR
  1278. Controls the domain of the Mono runtime that logging will apply to.
  1279. If set, the log mask is changed to the set value. Possible values are
  1280. "asm" (assembly loader), "type", "dll" (native library loader), "gc"
  1281. (garbage collector), "cfg" (config file loader), "aot" (precompiler) and "all".
  1282. The default value is "all". Changing the mask value allows you to display only
  1283. messages for a certain component. You can use multiple masks by comma
  1284. separating them. For example to see config file messages and assembly loader
  1285. messages set you mask to "asm,cfg".
  1286. .TP
  1287. \fBMONO_TRACE\fR
  1288. Used for runtime tracing of method calls. The format of the comma separated
  1289. trace options is:
  1290. .nf
  1291. [-]M:method name
  1292. [-]N:namespace
  1293. [-]T:class name
  1294. [-]all
  1295. [-]program
  1296. disabled Trace output off upon start.
  1297. .fi
  1298. You can toggle trace output on/off sending a SIGUSR2 signal to the program.
  1299. .TP
  1300. \fBMONO_TRACE_LISTENER\fR
  1301. If set, enables the System.Diagnostics.DefaultTraceListener, which will
  1302. print the output of the System.Diagnostics Trace and Debug classes.
  1303. It can be set to a filename, and to Console.Out or Console.Error to display
  1304. output to standard output or standard error, respectively. If it's set to
  1305. Console.Out or Console.Error you can append an optional prefix that will
  1306. be used when writing messages like this: Console.Error:MyProgramName.
  1307. See the System.Diagnostics.DefaultTraceListener documentation for more
  1308. information.
  1309. .TP
  1310. \fBMONO_XEXCEPTIONS\fR
  1311. This throws an exception when a X11 error is encountered; by default a
  1312. message is displayed but execution continues
  1313. .TP
  1314. \fBMONO_XSYNC\fR
  1315. This is used in the System.Windows.Forms implementation when running
  1316. with the X11 backend. This is used to debug problems in Windows.Forms
  1317. as it forces all of the commands send to X11 server to be done
  1318. synchronously. The default mode of operation is asynchronous which
  1319. makes it hard to isolate the root of certain problems.
  1320. .TP
  1321. \fBMONO_GENERIC_SHARING\fR
  1322. This environment variable controls the kind of generic sharing used.
  1323. This variable is used by internal JIT developers and should not be
  1324. changed in production. Do not use it.
  1325. .Sp
  1326. The variable controls which classes will have generic code sharing
  1327. enabled.
  1328. .Sp
  1329. Permissible values are:
  1330. .RS
  1331. .TP
  1332. .I "all"
  1333. All generated code can be shared.
  1334. .TP
  1335. .I "collections"
  1336. Only the classes in System.Collections.Generic will have its code
  1337. shared (this is the default value).
  1338. .TP
  1339. .I "corlib"
  1340. Only code in corlib will have its code shared.
  1341. .TP
  1342. .I "none"
  1343. No generic code sharing will be performed.
  1344. .RE
  1345. .Sp
  1346. Generic code sharing by default only applies to collections. The
  1347. Mono JIT by default turns this on.
  1348. .TP
  1349. \fBMONO_XDEBUG\fR
  1350. When the the MONO_XDEBUG env var is set, debugging info for JITted
  1351. code is emitted into a shared library, loadable into gdb. This enables,
  1352. for example, to see managed frame names on gdb backtraces.
  1353. .TP
  1354. \fBMONO_VERBOSE_METHOD\fR
  1355. Enables the maximum JIT verbosity for the specified method. This is
  1356. very helpfull to diagnose a miscompilation problems of a specific
  1357. method.
  1358. .SH VALGRIND
  1359. If you want to use Valgrind, you will find the file `mono.supp'
  1360. useful, it contains the suppressions for the GC which trigger
  1361. incorrect warnings. Use it like this:
  1362. .nf
  1363. valgrind --suppressions=mono.supp mono ...
  1364. .fi
  1365. .SH DTRACE
  1366. On some platforms, Mono can expose a set of DTrace probes (also known
  1367. as user-land statically defined, USDT Probes).
  1368. .TP
  1369. They are defined in the file `mono.d'.
  1370. .TP
  1371. .B ves-init-begin, ves-init-end
  1372. .Sp
  1373. Begin and end of runtime initialization.
  1374. .TP
  1375. .B method-compile-begin, method-compile-end
  1376. .Sp
  1377. Begin and end of method compilation.
  1378. The probe arguments are class name, method name and signature,
  1379. and in case of method-compile-end success or failure of compilation.
  1380. .TP
  1381. .B gc-begin, gc-end
  1382. .Sp
  1383. Begin and end of Garbage Collection.
  1384. .TP
  1385. To verify the availability of the probes, run:
  1386. .nf
  1387. dtrace -P mono'$target' -l -c mono
  1388. .fi
  1389. .SH FILES
  1390. On Unix assemblies are loaded from the installation lib directory. If you set
  1391. `prefix' to /usr, the assemblies will be located in /usr/lib. On
  1392. Windows, the assemblies are loaded from the directory where mono and
  1393. mint live.
  1394. .TP
  1395. .B ~/.mono/aot-cache
  1396. .Sp
  1397. The directory for the ahead-of-time compiler demand creation
  1398. assemblies are located.
  1399. .TP
  1400. .B /etc/mono/config, ~/.mono/config
  1401. .Sp
  1402. Mono runtime configuration file. See the mono-config(5) manual page
  1403. for more information.
  1404. .TP
  1405. .B ~/.config/.mono/certs, /usr/share/.mono/certs
  1406. .Sp
  1407. Contains Mono certificate stores for users / machine. See the certmgr(1)
  1408. manual page for more information on managing certificate stores and
  1409. the mozroots(1) page for information on how to import the Mozilla root
  1410. certificates into the Mono certificate store.
  1411. .TP
  1412. .B ~/.mono/assemblies/ASSEMBLY/ASSEMBLY.config
  1413. .Sp
  1414. Files in this directory allow a user to customize the configuration
  1415. for a given system assembly, the format is the one described in the
  1416. mono-config(5) page.
  1417. .TP
  1418. .B ~/.config/.mono/keypairs, /usr/share/.mono/keypairs
  1419. .Sp
  1420. Contains Mono cryptographic keypairs for users / machine. They can be
  1421. accessed by using a CspParameters object with DSACryptoServiceProvider
  1422. and RSACryptoServiceProvider classes.
  1423. .TP
  1424. .B ~/.config/.isolatedstorage, ~/.local/share/.isolatedstorage, /usr/share/.isolatedstorage
  1425. .Sp
  1426. Contains Mono isolated storage for non-roaming users, roaming users and
  1427. local machine. Isolated storage can be accessed using the classes from
  1428. the System.IO.IsolatedStorage namespace.
  1429. .TP
  1430. .B <assembly>.config
  1431. .Sp
  1432. Configuration information for individual assemblies is loaded by the
  1433. runtime from side-by-side files with the .config files, see the
  1434. http://www.mono-project.com/Config for more information.
  1435. .TP
  1436. .B Web.config, web.config
  1437. .Sp
  1438. ASP.NET applications are configured through these files, the
  1439. configuration is done on a per-directory basis. For more information
  1440. on this subject see the http://www.mono-project.com/Config_system.web
  1441. page.
  1442. .SH MAILING LISTS
  1443. Mailing lists are listed at the
  1444. http://www.mono-project.com/Mailing_Lists
  1445. .SH WEB SITE
  1446. http://www.mono-project.com
  1447. .SH SEE ALSO
  1448. .PP
  1449. certmgr(1), csharp(1), mcs(1), mdb(1), monocov(1), monodis(1), mono-config(5), mozroots(1), xsp(1).
  1450. .PP
  1451. For more information on AOT:
  1452. http://www.mono-project.com/AOT
  1453. .PP
  1454. For ASP.NET-related documentation, see the xsp(1) manual page