To begin, several similar questions have previously been asked on this site, notably here and here. The former is 11 years old, and the latter, while being 4 years old, references the 11 year old post as the solution. I am curious to know if there is something more recent that could accomplish the task. In addition, these questions are only interested in the total time spent by the interpreter. I am hoping for something more granular than that, if such a thing exists.
The problem: I have a GTK program written in C that spawns a matplotlib Python process and embeds it into a widget within the GTK program using GtkSocket and GtkPlug. The python process is spawned using g_spawn (GLib) and then the plot is plugged into the socket on the Python side after it has been created. It takes three seconds to do so, during which time the GtkSocket widget is transparent. This is not very pleasant aesthetically, and I would like to see if there is anything I could do to reduce this three second wait time. I looked at using PyPy instead of CPython as the interpreter, but I am not certain that PyPy has matplotlib support, and that route could cause further headaches since I freeze the script to an executable using PyInstaller. I timed the script itself from beginning to end and the time was around 0.25 seconds. I can run the plotting script from the terminal (normal or frozen) and it takes the same amount of time for the plot to appear (~3 seconds), so it can't be the g_spawn(). The time must all be spent within the interpreter.
I created a minimal example that reproduces the issue (although much less extreme, the time before the plot appears in the socket is only one second). I am not going to post it now since it is not necessarily relevant, although if requested, I can add the file contents with an edit later (contains the GUI C code using GTK, an XML Glade file, and the Python script).
The fact that the minimal example takes one second and my actual plot takes three seconds is hardly a surprise (and further confirms that the timing problem is the time spent with the interpreter), since it is more complicated and involves more imports.
The question: Is there any utility that exists that would allow me to profile where the time is being spent within my script by the Python interpreter? Is most of the time spent with the imports? Is it elsewhere? If I could see where the interpreter spends most of its time, that may possibly allow me to reduce this three second wait time to something less egregious.
Any assistance would be appreciated.
