Re: [PATCH] perf util: Display warning when perf report/annotate is missing some libs

From: Jin, Yao
Date: Tue Mar 20 2018 - 22:11:18 EST


Hi Jiri,

I'm still thinking it's worth displaying the warning when perf missing some libraries.

Somebody just told me that perf didn't work well. While after some investigations, I found it's just missing some libraries when building the perf.

But I have spent some time on getting the root cause. If with this patch, it should be very easily to know that.

Thanks
Jin Yao

On 1/12/2018 10:22 AM, Jin, Yao wrote:


On 1/11/2018 11:30 PM, Jiri Olsa wrote:
On Thu, Jan 11, 2018 at 07:03:06PM +0800, Jin Yao wrote:
We keep having bug reports that when users build perf on their own,

we already have same warnings during the build


Yes, there will be warnings displayed during the build if some libraries are missing.

While I do find the users (especially the new perf user) don't notice the warning. They only care about the success of build.

Once they use this perf version and find something working strangely, they will say that perf may have bug. :(

but they don't install some needed libraries like libelf, libbfd/libibery.

how about saying that in the symbol column,
instead of poluting report's output, like:

ÂÂÂÂ$ perf report --stdio

ÂÂÂÂ# Overhead Command Shared Object Symbol (disabled)
ÂÂÂÂ# ........ ....... ................ ......................


I just think it'd better provide some hints to user. For example, "symbol is disabled and you need to install libelf/xxx", say something like that.

But it looks the column can't contain too much information (i.e. no more space to contain the entire hints).

Any idea? Or just add this warning in verbose mode?

also your change does not affect tui mode

annotation for some reason does not start at all.. could be
little more verbose ;-)

jirka


Yes, it doesn't affect tui mode.

Or we just add this warning in verbose mode?

e.g. perf report -v?

Thanks
Jin Yao