Nesting engineering type tracks under custom instrument

Hey there!

Great question.

In general, you can specify multiple levels in the engineering-type-track elements by specifying multiple hierarchy levels.

Your tracks can be nested under instrument if you specify <self/> as the first hierarchy level, like so:

<hierarchy>
     <level> <self/> </level>
     <level> <column>value-column</column> </level>
</hierarchy>

Then, in the matching augmentation, you'll need to provide Instrument type ID as the first restriction level:

<slice-type-hierarchy>
     <level>
          <slice-type>instrument-type</slice-type>
          <equals>
               <instrument-type>com.example.your-instrument-id</instrument-type>
          </equals>
     </level>
     <level>
          <slice-type>value-column-type</slice-type>
      </level>
</slice-type-hierarchy>

Please keep in mind that you can create hierarchies even if you don't nest something under instrument track — just specify more levels in the hierarchy. Some bundled Instruments like Time Profiler do exactly this — summarize CPU whole machine CPU activity on the Time Profiler track and later provides process/thread separation in form of a separate hierarchy.

I hope this helps. Please let me know if you encounter any problems.

That worked perfectly, thanks a lot!

I have another question though: I've been trying to get `containment-level-from` to work, but it doesn't seem to do much so far. I've added an explicit `level` column and the intervals at level 1 are all fully contained in level 0 intervals. Adding `<containment-level-from>level</containment-level-from>` to my `<plot>` results in no visible intervals at all. If I specify `<qualified-by>level</qualified-by>` instead, at least both levels are visible, although the level 1 intervals are displayed underneath the level 0 ones, not nested inside them (as I would expect `containment-level-from` to do).

Interestingly, when I specify both qualified-by and containment-level-from, I get this build time error:

> qualified-by and containment-level-from cannot currently be used together due to a workaround that will be resolved shortly in further Instruments 11 betas.

Does this mean the functionality may not yet be working? Or am I missing something?

(Sorry for the weird formatting, I can't seem to figure out how to get inline code formatting or quoting, hence the pseudo-markdown...)

Hi!

You got it right. We have a known issue with containment plots and they don't work properly in the current builds of Instruments. Sorry for your inconvenience.

For now — maybe I can suggest you some alternative presentation? Can you describe how did you want to use containment plots?

Thank you very much,

Kacper