texprof - A profiler for TeX source files
texprof [options] [&format]
[file|\commands]
Run the TeX profiler on file, usually creating
file.dvi and file.tprof. If the file argument has no
extension, ".tex" will be appended to it. Instead of a file name,
a list of TeX commands can be given, the first of which must start with a
backslash. With a &format argument, the TeX profiler uses
a different set of precompiled commands, contained in
format.fmt; it is usually better to use the -fmt
format option instead.
The TeX profiler is a version of TeX that measures the time TeX
needs to execute individual input lines or macros. It writes the collected
data to a file with extension .tprof. A separate program,
texprofile (see texprofile(1)), is used to display the content
of a .tprof file in a readable form.
The typical use of the TeX profiler is with pre generated formats.
The texprof command uses the equivalent of the plain TeX format, and
the latexprof command uses the equivalent of the LaTeX format. To
investigate the timing of macros targeted to pdftex or
pdflatex, you can use pdftexprof or pdflatexprof.
The TeX profiler's handling of its command-line arguments is
similar to that of the other TeX programs in the web2c
implementation.
This version of the TeX profiler understands the following command
line options.
- -cnf-line string
- Parse string as a texmf.cnf configuration line. See the
Kpathsea manual.
- -etex
- Enable the e-TeX extensions. This option is only effective in combination
with -ini. See etex(1).
- -file-line-error
- Print error messages in the form file:line:error which is similar
to the way many compilers format them.
- -no-file-line-error
- Disable printing error messages in the file:line:error style.
- -fmt format
- Use format as the name of the format to be used, instead of the
name by which the TeX profiler was called or a %& line.
- -help
- Print help message and exit.
- -ini
- Start in INI mode, which is used to dump formats. The INI
mode can be used for typesetting, but no format is preloaded, and basic
initializations like setting catcodes may be required.
- -interaction mode
- Sets the interaction mode. The mode can be either batchmode,
nonstopmode, scrollmode, and errorstopmode. The
meaning of these modes is the same as that of the corresponding
\commands.
- -jobname name
- Use name for the job name, instead of deriving it from the name of
the input file.
- -kpathsea-debug bitmask
- Sets path searching debugging flags according to the bitmask. See the
Kpathsea manual for details.
- -ltx
- Enable the LaTeX extensions. This option is only effective in combination
with -ini. See latex(1).
- -mktex fmt
- Enable mktexfmt, where fmt must be either tex,
tfm, fmt, or pk.
- -no-mktex fmt
- Disable mktexfmt, where fmt must be either tex,
tfm, fmt, or pk.
- -output-directory directory
- Write output files in directory instead of the current directory.
Look up input files in directory first, then along the normal
search path.
- -parse-first-line
- If the first line of the main input file begins with %& parse
it to look for a dump name.
- -no-parse-first-line
- Disable parsing of the first line of the main input file.
- -pdf
- Enable the simulation of common pdftex primitives. This option
requires the -ini option and implies the -ltx option. See
pdftex(1).
- -prof
- Enable profiling as soon as TeX enters the main loop. If tis option it not
used, profiling needs to switched on using the \profileon primitive.
Profiling can be switched of with the \profileoff primitive.
- -progname name
- Pretend to be program name. This affects both the format used and
the search paths.
- -version
- Print version information and exit.
See the Kpathsea library documentation (e.g., the `Path
specifications' node) for precise details of how the environment variables
are used. The kpsewhich utility can be used to query the values of
the variables.
- TEXMFOUTPUT
- Normally, TeX puts its output files in the current directory. If any
output file cannot be opened there, it tries to open it in the directory
specified in the environment variable TEXMFOUTPUT. There is no default
value for that variable. For example, if you say texprof paper and
the current directory is not writable and TEXMFOUTPUT has the value
/tmp, TeX attempts to create /tmp/paper.log ,
/tmp/paper.dvi , and /tmp/paper.tprof . TEXMFOUTPUT is also
checked for input files, as TeX often generates files that need to be
subsequently read; for input, no suffixes (such as ``.tex'') are added by
default, the input name is simply checked as given.
- TEXINPUTS
- Search path for \input and \openin files. This normally
starts with ``.'', so that user files are found before system files. An
empty path component will be replaced with the paths defined in the
texmf.cnf file. For example, set TEXINPUTS to
".:/home/user/tex:" to prepend the current directory and
``/home/user/tex'' to the standard search path.
- TEXFORMATS
- Search path for format files.
- TFMFONTS
- Search path for font metric (.tfm) files.
- SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH
- If set, its value, taken to be in epoch-seconds, will be used for the
creation date and as the reference moment for the time related primitives
of LaTeX. This is useful for making reproducible builds.
- FORCE_SOURCE_DATE
- If set to the value "1", the time-related TeX primitives
(\year, \month, \day, \time) are also
initialized from the value of SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH. This is not recommended
if there is any viable alternative.
Many, many more environment variables may be consulted related to
path searching. See the Kpathsea manual.
The location of the files mentioned below varies from system to
system. Use the kpsewhich utility to find their locations.
- *.tfm
- Metric files for TeX's fonts.
- *.fmt
- Predigested TeX format files.
- *.pk *.pfb
- Font files used by TeX.
This manual page is not meant to be exhaustive. The complete
documentation for the TeX profiler can be found in texprof.pdf.
Further information can be found in the manual of the Kpathsea
library.
This version of the TeX profiler does not implement all of the
primitives that pdftex provides, and further, it will not produce the same
side effects.
The TeX profiler should compile on a large variety of machine
architectures and operating systems. The function to obtain timing
information id POSIX specific.
The sources of the TeX profiler are hosted at
https://github.com/ruckertm/HINT
texprofiler(1), tex(1), latex(1),
pdftex(1), pdflatex(1),and kpsewhich(1).
The primary author of the TeX profiler is Martin Ruckert, with
eTeX extensions by Peter Breitenlohner, LaTeX extensions by Thierry Laronde,
and the kpathsearch library by Karl Berry.
TeX was designed by Donald E. Knuth, who implemented it using his
Web system for Pascal programs.
Many, many more contributed to the typesetting system now known as
TeX; far too many to name all of them here.