linux-kernel - Re: [perfmon2] I.1 - System calls

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Message-Id: <1247506440.7500.43.camel@twins>
Date:	Mon, 13 Jul 2009 19:34:00 +0200
From:	Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@...llo.nl>
To:	Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>
Cc:	perfmon2-devel@...ts.sourceforge.net,
	Christoph Hellwig <hch@...radead.org>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>, eranian@...il.com,
	Philip Mucci <mucci@...s.utk.edu>,
	LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Andi Kleen <andi@...stfloor.org>,
	Paul Mackerras <paulus@...ba.org>,
	Maynard Johnson <mpjohn@...ibm.com>,
	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>,
	Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>
Subject: Re: [perfmon2] I.1 - System calls - ioctl

On Mon, 2009-07-13 at 19:30 +0200, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> On Monday 13 July 2009, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> > On Mon, 2009-06-22 at 08:58 -0400, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> > > But talking about syscalls the sys_perf_counter_open prototype is
> > > really ugly - it uses either the pid or cpu argument which is a pretty
> > > clear indicator it should actually be two sys calls.
> > 
> > Would something like the below be any better?
> > 
> > It would allow us to later add something like PERF_TARGET_SOCKET and
> > things like that.
> 
> I don't think it helps on the ugliness side. You basically make the
> two arguments a union, but instead of adding another flag and directly
> passing a union, you also add interface complexity.
> 
> A strong indication for the complexity is that you got it wrong ;-) :
> 
> > +struct perf_counter_target {
> > +	__u32			id;
> > +	__u64			val;
> > +};
> 
> This structure is not compatible between 32 and 64 bit user space on x86,
> because everything except i386 adds implicit padding between id and val.

Humm, __u64 doesn't have natural alignment? That would break more than
just this I think -- it sure surprises me.

> Other than that, making it extensible sounds reasonable. How about just
> using a '__u64 *target' and a bit in the 'flags' argument?

Would there still be a point in having it a pointer in that case?, but
yeah, that might work too?

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