use xcode to instrument/profile third-party app

1
votes

Is it possible to use Xcode Instruments to profile a third-party app? Right now, whenever I trying to profile any third-party app installed on device, I got error saying

'Target failed to run: Remote exception encountered: failed to get task for pid '

Is there any settings that need to be configured?

2
iphoneiosxcode-instruments

2 Answers

2
votes

From Apple documentation: For your protection, the instrument does not allow you to process any application that is not code-signed with your provisioning profile. This includes any copy that has been downloaded from the iTunes App Store.

-1
votes

UPDATE

As of more recent versions of iOS, you can only attach the profiler to your own developer-signed apps.

ORIGINAL

Using Xcode 4.4.1 and my iPad 3 running iOS 5.1.1, I'm able to use the Core Animation and Time Profiler instruments on third-party apps. I tried it with Twitter and Minecraft PE.

The profiles are rather useless since I don't have symbols for the apps. I just get a lot of addresses in hex. And Instruments won't even show me the disassembly of the apps. I believe this is because iOS, for security, doesn't allow Instruments (or gdb or lldb) to look at the address space of apps installed from the App Store.