What is 'self' that shows up in android trace view

Question

I've started to use the android Trace view tool to profile my game. In some of my methods im seeing a large percentage of time taken up in 'self'.

I have a feeling its something obvious but does anyone know what this represents?

Answer 1

Self is time spent in the actual method, instead of children. For example, if you have a method that runs a loop doing some math, and then calling some draw functions, you'll see the time listed for the draw functions in children, and the time spent in that method itself(mainly the math loop) as self.