Babeltrace /ˈbæbəltreɪs/ is an open source trace format converter.

The Babeltrace project provides a library, Python bindings of this library, as well as a handy little command-line tool—aptly named babeltrace—which makes it very easy for mere mortals to view and convert traces.

Babeltrace is also the reference parser implementation of the Common Trace Format (CTF), a very versatile trace format. The Babeltrace library and its Python bindings can read and write CTF traces.

Getting Babeltrace

Here are a few methods to obtain your own copy of Babeltrace.

Distribution packages

Babeltrace is packaged for most major desktop and embedded Linux distributions:

Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install babeltrace

The LTTng Stable PPA always offers the latest stable version of Babeltrace. To get the PPA version of Babeltrace, follow these steps:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:lttng/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install babeltrace

Debian

sudo apt-get install babeltrace

Fedora

sudo yum install babeltrace

openSUSE

First, add the appropriate repository, depending on your version of openSUSE.

openSUSE 13.1:

sudo zypper addrepo http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/tools:/lttng/openSUSE_13.1/devel:tools:lttng.repo

openSUSE 13.2:

sudo zypper addrepo http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/tools:/lttng/openSUSE_13.2/devel:tools:lttng.repo

openSUSE Factory:

sudo zypper addrepo http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/tools:/lttng/openSUSE_Factory/devel:tools:lttng.repo

Refresh the package database and install Babeltrace:

sudo zypper refresh
sudo zypper install babeltrace

Arch Linux

Babeltrace is available in the AUR.

If you have Yaourt:

yaourt -S babeltrace

Or, if you prefer the latest Git master version:

yaourt -S babeltrace-git

Buildroot

Enter the configuration menu:

make menuconfig

Then, under Debugging, profiling and benchmark, check the lttng-babeltrace package.

OpenEmbedded and Yocto

The babeltrace recipe is available in the openembedded-core layer of OpenEmbedded.

Building from source

See the project's README file for dependencies and detailed build instructions.

Tarballs

• Babeltrace 1.5.3 (latest stable release)
• Tarballs archives

./configure
make
sudo make install

Git

• git clone http://git.linuxfoundation.org/diamon/babeltrace.git
• Gitweb
• GitHub repository

./bootstrap
./configure
make
sudo make install

Documentation

Documentation is available for the Babeltrace Python bindings.

You may also be interested in the babeltrace command-line tool's man page.

Babeltrace 2.0 is imminent!

The Babeltrace project is currently going through a major overhaul. New APIs in both the C and Python languages will come out of this work.

Upcoming features include:

• Plugin-oriented tool: input, output, and filter plugins make supporting an input/output trace format and modifying an event stream easier than ever. Plugin instances are configurable.
• Simplified object model: Babeltrace objects share a common base. All the objects related to traces (trace, stream, event, field types, etc.) are part of CTF IR, an intermediate representation system common to all trace formats based on the Common Trace Format model.
• Reference counting all over the place: all Babeltrace objects now use reference counting; they are only destroyed when they become unneeded. The lifetimes of objects are now completely independent to ease the use of the API.

Stay tuned!

Community

Babeltrace was born to parse CTF traces produced by LTTng 2.0 and display them as a human-readable text output. Even though Babeltrace is independant from the LTTng project, their communities remain very close, which is why they share some services.

• Mailing list (lttng-dev): lttng-dev@lists.lttng.org (please read LTTng's contributor's guide, which also applies to the Babeltrace project, if you need to submit a patch)
• IRC channel: #lttng on the OFTC network
• Continuous integration (Jenkins)
• Bug tracker (Bugzilla)
• Stack Overflow: ask your question with the babeltrace tag