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QNX Momentics IDE User's Guide
This User's Guide describes version 8.0 of the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that's part of the QNX Tool Suite.
Analyzing System Behavior
Many IDE tools allow you to find errors and optimize applications, but to ensure that your embedded system behaves well, you need to use system-wide diagnostic tools. The QNX System Information and QNX System Profiler tools help you understand process and thread interaction on the target, reduce application and system startup times, and debug deadlock and improper CPU usage levels.
Analyzing kernel activity with the System Profiler
The System Profiler tool lets you view kernel event data gathered from a target. This tool displays graphs and tables that reveal kernel activity from all processes, down to the level of system calls and interrupts, over a fixed time period.
Interpreting trace data outside of the IDE
The System Profiler provides a flexible and powerful tool for viewing kernel event trace data. But if you prefer to directly read and interpret kernel event log (.kev) files, you can use non-IDE tools.

QNX Momentics IDE User's Guide
This User's Guide describes version 8.0 of the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that's part of the QNX Tool Suite.
- Working with QNX Momentics IDE
  QNX Momentics IDE provides a graphical environment for developing, running, debugging, and profiling applications.
- Developing Projects with the IDE
  To use the QNX Momentics IDE to write applications targeted for QNX OS systems, you must define projects, which are containers that store your source code, configuration files, and binary files.
- Debugging Applications
  The IDE allows you to debug a running application, a library used by the application, or a core file.
- Unit Testing
  The IDE lets you use commercial test frameworks to write unit tests and then execute them by launching a project. While running a test program, you can use the Code Coverage tool to determine how much of the code is exercised (covered) by your tests.
- Analyzing Memory Usage and Finding Memory Problems
  QNX Momentics IDE lets you run Memory Analysis and several Valgrind (pronounced val-grinned) tools to find memory problems such as leaks and corruption, and to measure memory usage of programs. It also provides the QNX System Information perspective so you can learn which processes are consuming memory or other resources excessively.
- Analyzing Performance
  QNX Momentics IDE works with the Application Profiler and Valgrind (pronounced val-grinned) Cachegrind tools, which measure the performance of programs running on QNX targets. It also offers the QNX System Information perspective for viewing performance-related metrics.
- Analyzing System Behavior
  Many IDE tools allow you to find errors and optimize applications, but to ensure that your embedded system behaves well, you need to use system-wide diagnostic tools. The QNX System Information and QNX System Profiler tools help you understand process and thread interaction on the target, reduce application and system startup times, and debug deadlock and improper CPU usage levels.
  - Analyzing kernel activity with the System Profiler
    The System Profiler tool lets you view kernel event data gathered from a target. This tool displays graphs and tables that reveal kernel activity from all processes, down to the level of system calls and interrupts, over a fixed time period.
    - Running a kernel event trace
      You can create log configurations to define kernel event trace parameters, then run one of these configurations to perform a trace. The generated log file contains data gathered from a target machine, including kernel events, CPU activity, and process and thread activity.
    - Interpreting trace data in the System Profiler
      When a kernel event trace launched through the IDE finishes, you can open the new log file to see the file's data in the System Profiler editor. This editor is highly interactive and lets you see subsets of event data, which helps you understand component interaction and troubleshoot problems.
    - Interpreting trace data outside of the IDE
      The System Profiler provides a flexible and powerful tool for viewing kernel event trace data. But if you prefer to directly read and interpret kernel event log (.kev) files, you can use non-IDE tools.
  - Controlling kernel event tracing
    The IDE lets you easily configure and start kernel event tracing. But sometimes, you might not have a target connection for controlling tracing. At these times, you can use the tracelogger utility to capture trace data. To further control tracing, your applications can call the kernel event trace API.
  - Importing and exporting kernel event trace results
    The System Profiler can import kernel event trace results generated outside of the IDE. When you examine trace results in the tool's editor, you can export a subset of events, to share or view the most relevant data. You can also export profiling data generated by instrumented applications into a new profiling session.
  - Formatting user events with the System Profiler
    Using the TraceEvent API, it's possible to emit custom trace events. However, these events are often difficult to understand in the Momentics IDE, since they don't have named fields the way QNX-provided events do. To address this, we've provided a mechanism for users to specify custom event formatted using an XML file. This guide provides an introduction to user event formatting so that you can interpret trace event data more effectively. The datakey specifier from the top-level eventdefinitons tag includes several subtags which are useful for formatting custom user events from the kernel. This data appears in the Trace Event Log table of the System Profiler. This guide covers the following subtags: event, bitmask, condition, and enum. For the XML reference, go to System Profiler: user event formatting XML reference.
- Building QNX OS Images
  Using the IDE's QNX System Builder feature, you can generate OS images, which are bootable images that contain startup code, the QNX OS, your applications, and any data files used by your applications. The IDE supports image building by allowing you to transfer an image to a target board.
- Reference
  The reference topics provide information about QNX Momentics IDE features and workflows that isn't covered in the chapters related to developing projects or debugging, testing, and analyzing applications.
- JTAG: Debugging with Lauterbach TRACE32
  The Lauterbach TRACE32® In-Circuit Debugger (TRACE32-ICD) supports the JTAG onchip interface so you can perform hardware debugging of QNX OS systems through the QNX Momentics IDE.
QNX Software Development Platform
QNX SDP is a cross-compiling and debugging environment, including an IDE and command-line tools, for building binary images and programs for target boards running the QNX OS 8.0.
QNX Software in the Cloud
QNX Software in the Cloud enables developers to use the QNX OS in the Amazon cloud environment.
QNX Toolkit for Visual Studio Code
This User's Guide describes the QNX^® Toolkit for Visual Studio Code. The guide introduces you to the QNX Toolkit by explaining the QNX development environment and how to build, run, and debug your QNX^® Operating System (OS) applications and systems.
QNX Hypervisor User's Guide
This User's Guide explains the QNX hypervisor architecture and provides instructions for installing and running a QNX Hypervisor system, changing system components and configuration, and using hypervisor features such as virtual devices (vdevs).
Typographical Conventions, Support, and Licensing
This section describes the typographical conventions used throughout the documentation, explains how to obtain technical support, and provides some information about licensing.

Interpreting trace data outside of the IDE

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The System Profiler provides a flexible and powerful tool for viewing kernel event trace data. But if you prefer to directly read and interpret kernel event log (.kev) files, you can use non-IDE tools.

There are two ways to analyze kernel event trace data outside of the System Profiler:

traceprinter: This command-line utility parses the events in a log file and sends their data to standard output. The tool is designed for displaying text descriptions of kernel events captured by tracelogger.; For full details, see the traceprinter entry of the Utilities Reference.
traceparser*(): This set of C library functions lets you interpret logged kernel data within your own programs. It defines a parser for reading the specified log file and supports creating callbacks to process specific events.; For details on this API, see the traceparser() entry of the C Library Reference.

Page updated: March 05, 2025