more flexibility in defining the boundaries of activity

[wizfromoz]

feature request:

we have a use case for CxxProf where the "activity" is not contained within one function scope, but rather starts in one function, and ends in another, and they don't have a common ancestor in the stack. We tried using _mark_s, but it's not quite helpful as these appear as independent events, and semantically, we do have the activity here.

While it may break the simplicity of the current activity concept, if we could add additional macros that start and end the activity independently, that would be great.

[monsdar]

Something like this could be possible by bending the current design a bit. There is also an open issue which is about special activites for mutexes, these would need some kind of "Start/Stop" macro too.

[wizfromoz]

I didn't want to push my luck by suggesting too much, but we did think about this one, too. Not just mutexes, but any kind of operation (like blocking I/O) that essentially is an activity, but one that includes waiting on something and whose duration may depend on factors external to the application itself. Kind of activity that is mostly inactive :-)

[monsdar]

Keep pushing it ;)
I'm quite loaded with my regular work currently, but it should get better. I'm planning on integrating CxxProf into more of my own projects, which essentially would boost development over here too.