[PATCH] perf: Improve PT documentation slightly

From: Andi Kleen
Date: Tue Oct 13 2020 - 23:54:15 EST


Document the higher level --insn-trace etc. perf script options.

Include the howto how to build xed into the manpage

Cc: adrian.hunter@xxxxxxxxx
Signed-off-by: Andi Kleen <ak@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
---
tools/perf/Documentation/perf-intel-pt.txt | 30 ++++++++++++++++++++++
1 file changed, 30 insertions(+)

diff --git a/tools/perf/Documentation/perf-intel-pt.txt b/tools/perf/Documentation/perf-intel-pt.txt
index d5a266d7f15b..cc2a8b2be31a 100644
--- a/tools/perf/Documentation/perf-intel-pt.txt
+++ b/tools/perf/Documentation/perf-intel-pt.txt
@@ -112,6 +112,32 @@ The flags are "bcrosyiABEx" which stand for branch, call, return, conditional,
system, asynchronous, interrupt, transaction abort, trace begin, trace end, and
in transaction, respectively.

+perf script also supports higher level ways to dump instruction traces:
+
+ perf script --insn-trace --xed
+
+Dump all instructions. This requires installing the xed tool (see XED below)
+Dumping all instructions in a long trace can be fairly slow. It is usually better
+to start with higher level decoding, like
+
+ perf script --call-trace
+
+or
+
+ perf script --call-ret-trace
+
+and then select a time range of interest. The time range can then be examined
+in detail with
+
+ perf script --time starttime,stoptime --insn-trace --xed
+
+While examining the trace it's also useful to filter on specific CPUs using
+the -C option
+
+ perf script --time starttime,stoptime --insn-trace --xed -C 1
+
+Dump all instructions in time range on CPU 1.
+
Another interesting field that is not printed by default is 'ipc' which can be
displayed as follows:

@@ -1093,6 +1119,10 @@ To display PEBS events from the Intel PT trace, use the itrace 'o' option e.g.

perf script --itrace=oe

+XED
+---
+
+include::build-xed.txt[]

SEE ALSO
--------
--
2.28.0