Python profiling with PyCharm Community Edition

 

Before we start, if you don`t know what is profiling read this Wikipedia article! In my opinion profiling should be a part of every development/build process! Whether the responsibility lies with QA or development. Python profiler are supported only in PyCharm Professional Edition. This article show you the possibilities for the community edition.

Preparation

• PyCharm installed
• Virtualenv or similar installed (optional)
• PyCharm BashSupport Plugin installed

The easiest Profiler

With Unix/Linux time command you have allready a simple profiler! Time writes a message to standard output. Here you will find some information on Stackoverflow.

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#!/usr/bin/env python # -*- coding: utf-8 -*-     def hello_world():       for i in range(1, 5):         print '%d Hello world from python...' % i     if __name__ == '__main__':     hello_world()

With BashSupport Plugin we can setup the 「Run/Debug Configuration」 like:

Better informations

But now we need better information. For this we use cProfile, cprofilev and snakeviz.

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# cProfile is part of standard python library   # install snakeviz $ pip install snakeviz   # install cprofildev $ pip install cprofilev

「Run/Debug Configuration」 example

Now will store the results into a file

With snakeviz you can open the profile in browser:

1	$ snakeviz output.prof

The other option is to use cprofilev:

Even more information

If that was not enough,… we install some more libraries.

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# install line_profiler $ pip install line_profiler   # install memory_profiler and psutil $ pip install memory_profiler $ pip install psutil

Now we need to change the example code. We add the decorator…

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#!/usr/bin/env python # -*- coding: utf-8 -*-     @profile def hello_world():       for i in range(1, 5):         print '%d Hello world from python...' % i     if __name__ == '__main__':     hello_world()

the line_profiler configuration

the memory_profiler

All configurations could now startet via the 「Run」 button. There are even more Profiler that you can use with similar PyCharm.