Dynamic

The Dynamic tab (8) launches the assembly and traces it in real time using EventPipe — the same diagnostic infrastructure behind dotnet-trace and dotnet-counters.

What it captures

• GC events — collections, heap sizes, pause durations
• JIT compilations — every method as it gets compiled, with timing
• Exceptions — first-chance and unhandled exceptions
• Performance counters — CPU, memory, thread pool, GC rates
• stdout / stderr — captured output from the running process

Sub-tabs

The dynamic tab has four sub-tabs. Press Left / Right to switch between them.

Events — a table of all trace events. Use the filter keys (g GC, j JIT, e Exception, l Loader, t Threading, h HTTP, s Socket) to narrow by category. Press Esc to clear the filter. Press / to search within events.

Counters — live performance counters in four sections: CPU, Memory, GC Collections, and Threading. Each section is a read-only editor — press Tab to cycle through them. Select text and press y to yank. iw, yiw, V, and yy all work. Counters update every ~1 second while the process is running.

Output — stdout and stderr from the traced process. stderr lines show in red. Press / to search output. The latest 5,000 lines are retained. A line longer than 64 KiB is truncated and marked so an unbounded write cannot exhaust the trace host.

Summary — trace summary stats (total events, duration, jitted methods, GC collections, exceptions, peak memory) in a read-only editor with the same selection and yank support as Counters. Below it, an event distribution chart shows the breakdown by category.

Text selection and copy

On the Events and Output tables, focus a row and press y to copy it to the clipboard. The focused row flashes briefly to confirm the yank.

On the Counters and Summary editors, select text with click-drag or Shift + arrow keys, then press y to copy. iw selects the word under the cursor, yiw copies it directly. V selects the line, yy copies it. Press Tab to cycle focus between editors (on Counters) or between the editor and the sub-tab strip.

Cross-tab navigation

Press Enter on a JIT compilation event to jump to that method’s IL disassembly in tab 3’s IL view.

Re-running

Press a on the idle screen to open the argument editor. Enter validates the text and launches the process. Escape discards the draft and restores the last committed arguments. After the process exits, press Enter to re-run with the committed arguments.

Whitespace separates arguments. Single and double quotes group text, adjacent quoted and unquoted segments form one argument, and "" or '' passes an empty argument. A backslash escapes whitespace, the active quote, or another backslash. Unmatched quotes and trailing escapes remain in the editor with a validation notice.

Shell operators such as &, ;, |, >, $(), and * are literal argument content. The launcher passes every value through ProcessStartInfo.ArgumentList.

How it works

dotsider launches an existing managed DLL or platform executable with a reverse-connect diagnostic port, so events are captured from the very first instruction. Windows direct-launch targets must be .exe files; Unix targets must be executable. Shell scripts and Windows command files are not accepted as Windows trace targets.

EventPipe parsing runs in the bundled framework-dependent tracehost helper and requires a .NET 10-or-later runtime. The helper uses the same absolute dotnet host that started it, and Unix diagnostic sockets are isolated in a private temporary directory. If the helper or runtime is unavailable, the Dynamic tab explains the missing requirement and leaves trace launch disabled.