docs/dev/how_to/debugging_tvm.rst

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.. _debugging-tvm:

Debugging TVM
==============

**NOTE**: This page is a work in-progress. Everyone is welcomed to add suggestions and tips via
sending a PR to modify this page. The goal with this page is to centralize the commonly-used
techniques being used to debug TVM and to spread awareness to the community. To that end, we may
seek to promote more broadly-used techniques to the top of this doc.

VLOGging
--------

TVM provides a verbose-logging facility that allows you to commit trace-level debugging messages
without impacting the binary size or runtime of TVM in production. You can use VLOG in your code
as follows:

.. code-block:: c++

    void Foo(const std::string& bar) {
      VLOG(2) << "Running Foo(" << bar << ")";
      // ...
    }

In this example, the integer ``2`` passed to ``VLOG()`` indicates a verbosity level. The higher the
level, the more logs printed. In general, TVM levels range from 0 to 2, with 3 being used only for
extremely low-level core runtime properties. The VLOG system is configured at startup time to print
VLOG statements between ``0`` and some integer ``N``. ``N`` can be set per-file or globally.

VLOGs don't print or impact binary size or runtime by default (when compiled with proper
optimization). To enable VLOGging, do the following:

1. In ``config/cmake``, ensure you ``set(USE_RELAY_DEBUG ON)``. This flag is used to enable
   VLOGging.
2. Launch Python passing ``TVM_LOG_DEBUG=<spec>``, where ``<spec>`` is a comma-separated list of
   level assignments of the form ``<file_name>=<level>``. Here are some specializations:

    - The special filename ``DEFAULT`` sets the VLOG level setting for all files.
    - ``<level>`` can be set to ``-1`` to disable VLOG in that file.
    - ``<file_name>`` is the name of the c++ source file (e.g. ``.cc``, not ``.h``) relative to the
      ``src/`` directory in the TVM repo. You do not need to supply ``src/`` when specifying the
      file path, but if you do, VLOG will still interpret the path correctly.

Examples:

.. code-block:: shell

   # enable VLOG(0), VLOG(1), VLOG(2) in all files.
   $ TVM_LOG_DEBUG=DEFAULT=2 python3 -c 'import tvm'

   # enable VLOG(0), VLOG(1), VLOG(2) in all files, except not VLOG(2) in src/bar/baz.cc.
   $ TVM_LOG_DEBUG=DEFAULT=2,bar/baz.cc=1 python3 -c 'import tvm'

   # enable VLOG(0), VLOG(1), VLOG(2) in all files, except not in src/foo/bar.cc.
   $ TVM_LOG_DEBUG=DEFAULT=2,src/foo/bar.cc=-1 python3 -c 'import tvm'