[wpilib] Tracer Overhaul

[oh-yes-0-fps]

Example usage kinda

resolves #6583
resolves #609

[rzblue]

I don't think Tracer should be a static global, as it is used in multiple places that shouldn't have mixed outputs.

[oh-yes-0-fps]

I don't think Tracer should be a static global, as it is used in multiple places that shouldn't have mixed outputs.

It's being used differently here, it's similar to a flame graph with a cascading list of durations.
There are no mixed outputs, the tracer covers the whole robot and everything that happens during its runtime.
Also the tracer is more of ThreadLocal static and supports tracing multiple threads at once or restricting it to 1 thread.
It also has some tooling to attempt to isolate gc time from execution time but that can be turned off on a per thread basis.

[oh-yes-0-fps]

If performance is a concern we can make it so after a certain number of nests it is sent to only datalog instead.

[rzblue]

Ok, that's pretty cool.

A couple things:

• Tracer is part of the public API, so we will need to do a deprecation cycle on the old interface

• I think we should talk about how we want to handle telemetry like this; much like alerts we don't want it to be printed to the console, but it needs to be obvious how to access it. I also don't usually like tying things to NT directly, but maybe that's fine for now.

• have you done any benchmarks on the rio? I doubt performance will be a significant regression from the current implementation but it'd be good to double check.

[oh-yes-0-fps]

Performance wise it's quite good, we ran a version close to this all of the 2024 season based on some cursory testing it seems to use less than a ms per loop. The current implementation is more refined with 1/3 as many string allocs so it should be retested.

I don't like doing 1 topic per duration but there isn't really a way around it.

In terms of displaying to user im unsure of better ways to convey information. The watchdog will still print when overruns happen but not the epoch times. With glass, ascope and maybe elastic being packaged with wpilib I think teams should be expected to be able to use a dashboard to take full advantage of wpilib.

[oh-yes-0-fps]

In terms of deprecation of the old tracer api, we could just name this something else while still removing tracer from watchdog. Profiler isn't a terrible name but also not great.

Whats the etiquette on just leaving the old api with deprecation warnings and just having all the functions no-op or smthn until we can remove it.

[rzblue]

Whats the etiquette on just leaving the old api with deprecation warnings and just having all the functions no-op or smthn until we can remove it.

That's worse than removing it without deprecation.

[KangarooKoala]

Generally the route for changing to a new API is that you make the new API with a different name and deprecate the old one (without doing any other changes to the old version)- The point of deprecation is that you can still use it without breakage. When it comes time to remove the old API (usually a year after deprecation), you completely remove it.
I can't think of any case where you'd want to change methods to no-op, since that's a silent breakage.

[oh-yes-0-fps]

So I guess this is a broader question but what is the worry of changing the public API for something when adding it in a new major version? Especially something that is currently not used very much by users.

[calcmogul]

So I guess this is a broader question but what is the worry of changing the public API for something when adding it in a new major version?

Ostensibly, it lets teams migrate their code gradually over the course of a year rather than breaking it all at once. In my experience though, teams either fix the deprecation warnings immediately because they think they're errors, or they don't migrate until we force them to by removing the old API.

At least deprecation warnings provide guidance on how to upgrade though; immediate removal or API change gives no guidance whatsoever and can be frustrating, especially if we broke working code from the previous year.

I'm not sure what we'd name the new class instead though, because Tracer is the most obvious name.

[oh-yes-0-fps]

This class's functionality is now static, it wouldn't be hard to make an instance of it to keep the functionality of the old tracer. It would just be confusing but using proper docs and deprecation warnings could help with that.

[Gold856]

Is there any documentation for the time units Tracer publishes in?

[oh-yes-0-fps]

Is there any documentation for the time units Tracer publishes in?

Where would the best place to document those be? maybe it should even be placed in NT?

[Gold856]

Documentation in NT and the class doc would be good.

[Gold856]

Java has a code example, but C++ doesn't, for parity, C++ should have one too.

[Gold856]

Suggested change

	// If the cycle is poisoned, it will warn the user
	// and not publish any data
	bool m_cyclePoisoned = false;
	// If the cycle is poisoned, it will warn the user and not publish any data
	bool m_cyclePoisoned = false;

[Gold856]

Suggested change

	/*
	* If the cycle is poisoned, it will warn the user
	* and not publish any data.
	*/
	boolean m_cyclePoisoned = false;
	/** If the cycle is poisoned, it will warn the user and not publish any data. */
	boolean m_cyclePoisoned = false;

[Gold856]

Suggested change

	* ideally we only need `traceStack` but in the interest of memory optimization and string
	* Ideally we only need `traceStack` but in the interest of memory optimization and string

[Gold856]

Suggested change

	* // Subsystem periodics are automaticall traced
	* // Subsystem periodics are automatically traced

[Gold856]

Suggested change

	// reporting no data is better than bad data
	for (var publisher : m_publishers.entrySet()) {
	publisher.getValue().set(0.0);
	}
	// reporting no data is better than bad data
	for (var publisher : m_publishers.values()) {
	publisher.set(0.0);
	}