dtrace Command Description

The dtrace command provides a generic interface to the following essential services provided by the DTrace facility:

• Options to list the set of probes and providers currently published by DTrace

• Options to enable probes directly using any of the probe description specifiers (provider, module, function, name)

• Options to run the D compiler and compile one or more D program files or programs written directly on the command line

• Options to generate anonymous tracing programs (see Anonymous Tracing in DTrace)

• Options to generate program stability reports (see DTrace Stability Mechanisms)

• Options to modify DTrace tracing and buffering behavior and enable additional D compiler features (see DTrace Options and Tunables)

The dtrace command can also be used to create D scripts by using it in a #! declaration to create an interpreter file. For more information, see Scripting in DTrace. Finally, you can use dtrace to attempt to compile D programs and determine their properties without actually enabling any tracing by using the -e option.