Date:	Fri, 13 Jun 2008 13:01:12 +0200
From:	Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>
To:	"Frank Ch. Eigler" <fche@...hat.com>
Cc:	Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@...ymtl.ca>,
	Hideo AOKI <haoki@...hat.com>, mingo@...e.hu,
	Masami Hiramatsu <mhiramat@...hat.com>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, Steven Rostedt <rostedt@...dmis.org>
Subject: Re: Kernel marker has no performance impact on ia64.

On Thu, 2008-06-12 at 13:38 -0400, Frank Ch. Eigler wrote:
> Hi -
> 
> On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 06:53:41PM +0200, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> > [...]
> > > Think this through.  How should systemtap (or another user-space
> > > separate-compiled tool like lttng) do this exactly?
> > 
> > lttng has trace handlers to write data into some buffer, right?
> > The trace point need not be concerned with which data, nor into what
> > buffer.
> 
> The "which data" is definitely a trace point concern.  It communicates
> from the developer to users as to what values are likely to be of
> interest.

But that is tracer specific - I might write a scheduler tracer that
looks at the quality of scheduling decisions and thus wants to look at
the virtual timeline variables and the scheduling class of the tasks
involved.

That's a whole different context, but the trace points are the same. Are
you saying trace points are not to allow me to do that?

> > > (a) rely on debugging information?  Even assuming we could get proper
> > >     anchors (PC addresses or unambiguous type names) to start
> > >     searching dwarf data, we lose a key attractions of markers: that
> > >     it can robustly transfer data *without* dwarf data kept around.
> > 
> > Perhaps you can ship a reduced set of dwarf info [...]
> 
> "I" don't ship or generate dwarf data.  Distributors do.

That's ignoring the point - 'someone' could generate reduced debug info
to allow you to easily get what you want.

> > > (b) rely on hand-written C code (prototypes, pointer derefrencing
> > >     wrappers) distributed with systemtap?  Not only would this be a
> > >     brittle maintenance pain in the form of cude duplication, but then
> > >     errors in it couldn't even be detected until the final C
> > >     compilation stage.  That would make a lousy user experience.
> >
> > Not really sure what you mean here - I throught compile time errors
> > were the goal?!
> 
> For us, it's too late.  In systemtap, we try to give people useful
> information when they make mistakes.  For probes of whatever sort, we
> want to know the available data types and names, while just starting
> to process their script, so that we can check types and suggest
> alternatives.  C code compilation is quite some way removed and is
> supposed to be a systemtap internal implementation detail.

Sounds like you have an incomplete Native-Interface system then. You
should be able to match a native function description back to your
script language.

> > > (c) have systemtap try to parse the mhiramat-proposed "(struct
> > >     task_struct * next, struct task_struct * prev)" format strings?
> > >     Then we're asking systemtap to parse potentially general C type
> > >     expressions, find the kernel headers that declare the types?
> > >     Parse available subfields?  That seems too much to ask for.
> > 
> > tcc and sourcefs sound like way fun ;-)
> 
> Really...

Yeah, wouldn't it be cool if the kernel came with an embedded compiler
and a filesystem that included its exact source code? Together with the
entry instrumentation site and dynamic jump patches you can do really
weird stuff... /me dreams on :-)

> > > (d) or another way?
> > 
> > Get your own tracer in kernel - that provides exactly what stap needs?
> 
> You are missing that (a) this is the point of markers - to allow the
> the gajillion tracers a single place per event to hook through, and
> (b) we would like to leave to subsystem developers and/or end-users as
> to what data should be available.  We don't want to get into the
> middle of it.

I think a) and b) contradict each other, you cannot cater for all
tracers and limit the data they can use.


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