[Question] perf tools: lex parsing issue

[John Garry]

Hi jirka,

If you remember from some time ago we discussed how the lex parsing 
creates strange aliases:

https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20200320093006.GA1343171@krava/

I am no expert on l+y, but it seems that we simply don't set the term 
config field for known term types. Well, not for 
PARSE_EVENTS__TERM_TYPE_SAMPLE_PERIOD type anyway.

This super hack resolves that issue:

--->8----

--- a/tools/perf/util/parse-events.y
+++ b/tools/perf/util/parse-events.y
@@ -765,7 +765,12 @@ event_config ',' event_term
struct list_head *head = $1;
struct parse_events_term *term = $3

+ if (term->type_term == PARSE_EVENTS__TERM_TYPE_SAMPLE_PERIOD) {
+ 	term->config = strdup("period");
+ }
+
if (!head) {
	parse_events_term__delete(term);
	YYABORT;
--

----8-----

So we get "umask=0x80,period=0x30d40,event=0x6" now, rather than 
"umask=0x80,(null)=0x30d40,event=0x6", for the perf_pmu_alias.str, as an 
example.

Did you ever get a chance to look into this issue? Do you know how could 
or should this field be set properly?

Some more background:
The reason I was looking at this is because I think it causes a problem 
for pmu-events (JSONs) aliasing for some PMUs. Specifically it's PMU 
which use "config=xxx" in sysfs files in 
/sys/bus/event_source/devices/PMUx/events/, rather than "event=xxx". The 
actual problem is that I trigger this warn in pmu.c:

static void perf_pmu_assign_str(char *name, const char *field, char 
**old_str,
char **new_str)
{

if (*new_str) { /* Have new string, check with old */
	if (strcasecmp(*old_str, *new_str))
		pr_debug("alias %s differs i ... <---

As I get "config=event=0xXXX" vs "config=(null)=0xXXX"

As I am not sure how to solve that yet, but, since we have 
config=(null), I thought it best to solve the first issue first.

Thanks,
John