EGYPT(1)

NAME
egypt - create call graph from gcc RTL dump

SYNOPISIS
 egypt [--omit function,function,...] [--include-external] <rtl-file>... | dotty -
 egypt [--omit function,function,...] [--include-external] <rtl-file>... | dot <dot-options>

DESCRIPTION
Egypt is a simple tool for creating call graphs of C programs.

OPTIONS

omit
    Omit the given functions from the call graph. Multiple function names may be given separated by commas.

include-external
    Include calls to external functions in the call graph. A function is considered external if it is not defined in any of the input files. For example, functions in the standard C library are external. Only direct function calls will be displayed; there is no way to display the action of taking the address of an external function.

HOW IT WORKS
The two major tasks in creating a call graph are analyzing the syntax of the source code to find the function calls and laying out the graph, but Egypt actually does neither. Instead, it delegates the source code analysis to GCC and the graph layout to Graphviz, both of which are better at their respective jobs than egypt could ever hope to be itself. Egypt itself is just a small Perl script that acts as glue between these existing tools.

Egypt takes advantage of GCC's capability to dump an intermediate representation of the program being compiled into a file (a RTL file); this file is much easier to extract information from than a C source file. Egypt extracts information about function calls from the RTL file and massages it into the format used by Graphviz.

GENERATING THE RTL FILE
Compile the program or source file you want to create a call graph for with gcc, adding the option "-fdump-rtl-expand" to CFLAGS. This option causes gcc to dump its intermediate code representation of each file it compiles into a a file. In old versions of GCC this option was called accepted "-dr", but GCC 4.4.0 and newer accept only the "-fdump-rtl-expand" form.

For example, the following works for many programs:

   make clean
   make CFLAGS=-fdump-rtl-expand

Depending on the GCC version, the RTL file for a source file foo.c may be called something like foo.c.rtl, foo.c.00.rtl, or foo.c.00.expand.

VIEWING THE CALL GRAPH
To view the call graph in an X11 window, run egypt with one or more RTL files as command line arguments and pipe its output to the dotty program from the Graphviz package. For example, if you compiled foo.c with "gcc -fdump-rtl-expand" to generate foo.c.00.expand, use

    egypt foo.c.00.expand | dotty -

PRINTING THE CALL GRAPH
To generate a PostScript version of the call graph for printing, use the dot program from the Graphviz package. For example, to generate a callgraph in the file callgraph.ps fitting everything on a US letter size page in landscape mode, try

   egypt foo.c.00.rtl | dot -Grotate=90 -Gsize=11,8.5 -Tps -o callgraph.ps

Sometimes, the graph will fit better if function calls go from left to right instead of top to bottom. The dot option -Grankdir=LR will do that:

   egypt foo.c.00.rtl | dot -Gsize=8.5,11 -Grankdir=LR -Tps -o callgraph.ps

For nontrivial programs, the graph may end up too small to comfortably read. If that happens, try N-up printing:

   egypt foo.c.00.rtl | dot -Gpage=8.5,11 -Tps -o callgraph.ps

You can also try playing with other dot options such as -Gratio, or for a different style of graph, try using neato instead of dot. See the Graphwiz documentation for more information about the various options available for customizing the style of the graph.

READING THE CALL GRAPH
Function calls are displayed as solid arrows. A dotted arrow means that the function the arrow points from takes the address of the function the arrow points to.

INDIRECT FUNCTION CALLS
Egypt does not display indirect function calls. Doing that is impossible in the general case: determining which functions will call each other indirectly at runtime would require solving the halting problem.

The dotted arrows generated by egypt are sometimes misunderstood to represent indirect calls, but that's not the case; they represent taking the address of a function, resulting in a function pointer. That function pointer will typically be used to make an indirect function call at some later time, but the call is not necessarily made from the same function where there address was taken, and it is generally not possible to determine where or even whether that call will take place.

The dotted arrows may or may not be useful for understanding the program structure depending on the particular style of programming used. One case where they are often useful is with event-driven programs where a sequence of events is handled by a chain of callback functions, each one registering the address of the next with the event handling framework before returning to the event loop. In such a program, the dotted arrows will indicate which callbacks cause which other callbacks to be invoked; such a graph may to be more useful than a graph of the actual indirect calls, which would just show the event loop calling every callback.

C++ SUPPORT
Egypt provides limited support for C++. When used with GCC version 4 or newer, egypt will automatically demangle C++ member function names and display them in in the native C++ syntax, e.g., "C::f()". Egypt will not display virtual function calls, because there is no easy way to determine which virtual function is being called based on the RTL.

WHY IS IT CALLED EGYPT?
Egypt was going to be called rtlcg, short for RTL Call Graph, but it turned out to be one of those rare cases where ROT13'ing the name made it easier to remember and pronounce.

SEE ALSO
gcc, dotty, dot, neato

COPYRIGHT
Copyright 1994-2011 Andreas Gustafsson

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

AUTHOR
Andreas Gustafsson