PHP introduced DTrace support with PHP 5.3, enabling probing points in the PHP executable that can be used to simplify probing of PHP applications without having to the PHP implementation details. We enabled probes on function calls, file compilation, exceptions and errors. But this has always been limited to the operating systems that support DTrace. With the popularity of DTrace, Systemap programmers decided to add a DTrace compatibility layer that allows to use DTrace probes as Systemtap probing points as well.

With my recent commit to the PHP 5.5 branch, we allow DTrace probes to be build on Linux, so people can use Systemtap to probe those userland probes.

$ git clone git://github.com/php/php-src php-src
$ cd php-src
$ git checkout PHP-5.5

$ ./buildconf --force
$ ./configure --disable-all --enable-dtrace
$ make

$ stap -l 'process.provider("php").mark("*")' -c 'sapi/cli/php -i'
process("sapi/cli/php").provider("php").mark("compile__file__entry")
process("sapi/cli/php").provider("php").mark("compile__file__return")
process("sapi/cli/php").provider("php").mark("error")
process("sapi/cli/php").provider("php").mark("exception__caught")
process("sapi/cli/php").provider("php").mark("exception__thrown")
process("sapi/cli/php").provider("php").mark("execute__entry")
process("sapi/cli/php").provider("php").mark("execute__return")
process("sapi/cli/php").provider("php").mark("function__entry")
process("sapi/cli/php").provider("php").mark("function__return")
process("sapi/cli/php").provider("php").mark("request__shutdown")
process("sapi/cli/php").provider("php").mark("request__startup")

$ cat request.stp
global callcount;
probe process.provider("php").mark("function-entry") {
    callcount[user_string($arg1)] += 1;
}
probe end {
    printf("count : function\n");
    foreach (name in callcount) {
        printf("%5d : %s\n", callcount[name], name);
    }
}

$ sudo stap -c 'sapi/cli/php test.php' request.stp
count : function
  100 : foo
  101 : bar