I am about to develop a piece of software and I want to ascertain the impact it has on my system. The main things I am look for are load times, memory and CPU usage and shutdown time, although I would like to get as much information as possible. I know I can use my distro's system monitor to get some of this stuff, but I need precise data as I am going to be doing some before and after tests during my project. Is there anything out there (preferably open source) that will suffice?
How can I test the system footprint of applications?
memory;performance;monitoring
It's looking that you need software profilers eg:for memory I use valgrind massif with linuxtools on eclipse.If you are not restricted by system/gpl try dtrace on solaris/sunos if not try systemtap(eclipse + linuxtools) or gprof if you have source code.