Binary pprof-upload uploads a performance profile in pprof format to Stackdriver Profiler UI for visualization.

Download and install Go, then run command

go get github.com/aalexand/pprof-upload

Add your $GOPATH/bin to $PATH for convenience.

You'll need a Google Cloud Platform project to upload and visualize the profiling data. You can use an existing project you have, or create a new one. Note the project ID, you'll need it in the upload command.

Make sure the project has the profiler API enabled.

Once the prerequisites are completed, run command like:

pprof-upload -project_id=your-project-id ~/path/to/profile.pb.gz

The command will upload the profile and print out a URL that can be visited to view the data. You should see something like

You can pass more than one profile path to the tool:

pprof-upload -project_id=your-project-id ~/path/*.pg.gz

In that case the profiles will be merged before being uploaded. The profiles must be merge-compatible - have the same profile type (e.g. heap vs. cpu) and set of metrics. You can also disable the merge like:

pprof-upload -merge=false -project_id=your-project-id ~/path/*.pg.gz

The profiles must still be merge-compatible but will be uploaded individually such that the merge will only be done at the viewing time. This is rarely needed and the main benefit is the ability to use the weight filter in the profiler UI.

Note that Stackdriver Profiler stores data for 30 days, so the profile will be gone after about a month.

See also Stackdriver Profiler quickstart on how to enable continuous production profiling for a service running on Google Cloud Platform.