Re: [RFC][PATCH] convert block trace points to TRACE_EVENT()

From: Li Zefan
Date: Tue May 19 2009 - 02:10:53 EST


Frederic Weisbecker wrote:
> On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 02:20:03PM +0800, Li Zefan wrote:
>> TRACE_EVENT is a more generic way to define tracepoints. Doing so adds
>> these new capabilities to this tracepoint:
>>
>> - zero-copy and per-cpu splice() tracing
>> - binary tracing without printf overhead
>> - structured logging records exposed under /debug/tracing/events
>> - trace events embedded in function tracer output and other plugins
>> - user-defined, per tracepoint filter expressions
>> ...
>>
>> Cons and problems:
>>
>> - no dev_t info for the output of plug, unplug_timer and unplug_io events.
>> no dev_t info for getrq and sleeprq events if bio == NULL.
>> no dev_t info for rq_abort,...,rq_requeue events if rq->rq_disk == NULL.
>>
>> - for large packet commands, only 16 bytes of the command will be output.
>> Because TRACE_EVENT doesn't support dynamic-sized arrays, though it
>> supports dynamic-sized strings.
>>
>> - a packet command is converted to a string in TP_assign, not TP_print.
>> While blktrace do the convertion just before output.
>>
>> - in blktrace, an event can have 2 different print formats, but a TRACE_EVENT
>> has a unique format. (see the output of getrq and rq_insert)
>
> I'm starting to think it would be nice to choose between several outputs
> in a trace event.
> Ie: perhaps we need a kind of per event flag, something simple, just to
> choose between several TP_printk output. Not sure how much it would
> (non) trivial to implement though...
>

If a trace event wants several TP_printk output, probably it wants different
structs of trace entry, otherwise we'll be wasting memory.

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