= Overview =
The Linux Tools Trace Viewer is a stand-alone application based on Eclipse's
Rich Client Platform (RCP). The purpose of this is to provide a lightweight
application to view and analyze traces. It includes all TMF (Tracing and
Monitoring Framework) features, as well as all features from the LTTng (Linux
Tracing Toolkit next generation) Eclipse integration, which are provided by the
Linux Tools Project.

= Getting Started =
To start the Linux Tools Trace Viewer, go to the directory where the Trace
Viewer is installed and then run the application named '''traceViewer'''.
During startup, the Trace Viewer will create, if necessary, an Eclipse workspace
in the user's home directory with the name ''.traceviewer''. It also creates, if
needed, a default tracing project called ''Tracing''.

Now the application can be used as described in the User Guide for Linux Tools
LTTng integration (see section [[#References | References]]).

= Opening a Trace =
To open a trace, click on the '''File''' menu and select '''Open Trace...'''.
A new dialog will show for selecting a trace to open. Select a trace file
and then click on '''OK'''. Note that for traces that are directories
(such as Common Trace Format (CTF) traces) any file in the trace directory can
be selected to open the trace. Now, the trace viewer's auto detection algorithm
will validate the trace against all known trace types. If multiple trace types
are valid, a trace type is chosen based on a confidence criteria. The
validation process and the computation of the confidence level are trace type
specific. After successful validation the trace will be opened with the
detected trace type.

Alternatively the user can launch the trace viewer with the command-line
argument '''--open <trace-path>'''. The trace will then automatically open 
using the same algorithm than described above.

In both of the above cases, the trace will be linked to the default project.

= References =

* [http://www.eclipse.org/linuxtools/projectPages/lttng/ Linux Tools - LTTng integration]
* [http://www.lttng.org/ LTTng project]