[PATCH 0/7] Rewrite jevents program in python

From: Ian Rogers
Date: Wed May 11 2022 - 03:01:57 EST


New architectures bring new complexity, such as Intel's hybrid
models. jevents provides an alternative to specifying events in the
kernel and exposing them through sysfs, however, it is difficult to
work with. For example, an error in the json input would yield an
error message but no json file or location. It is also a challenge to
update jsmn.c given its forked nature.

The changes here switch from jevents.c to a rewrite in python called
jevents.py. This means there is a build time dependency on python, but
such a dependency already exists for asciidoc (used to generate perf's
man pages).

A challenge with this code is in avoiding regressions. For this reason
the jevents.py produces identical output to jevents.c, validated with a
test script and build target.

A difference in the python to the C approach is that the python loads
an entire json file in to memory, while the C code works from token to
token. In some cases the C approach was sensitive to the order of
dictionary items in the json file. To ensure matching output there are
two changes made to jevents.c to cause it to read all values before
creating output.

The changes also found a bug in Ivytown's UNC_M_ACT_COUNT.RD event
encoding, as well as unnecessary whitespace introduced in Alderlake's
metrics. In these cases the json input is fixed.

Ian Rogers (7):
perf jevents: Append PMU description later
perf vendor events: Fix Alderlake metric groups
perf vendor events: Fix Ivytown UNC_M_ACT_COUNT.RD umask
perf jevents: Modify match field
perf jevents: Add python converter script
perf jevents: Switch build to use jevents.py
perf jevents: Remove jevents.c

tools/perf/Makefile.perf | 13 +-
tools/perf/pmu-events/Build | 9 +-
.../arch/x86/alderlake/adl-metrics.json | 32 -
.../arch/x86/ivytown/uncore-memory.json | 3 +-
tools/perf/pmu-events/jevents.c | 1322 -----------------
tools/perf/pmu-events/jevents.py | 392 +++++
tools/perf/pmu-events/jsmn.h | 68 -
tools/perf/pmu-events/json.c | 162 --
tools/perf/pmu-events/json.h | 39 -
tools/perf/tests/pmu-events.c | 30 +-
10 files changed, 412 insertions(+), 1658 deletions(-)
delete mode 100644 tools/perf/pmu-events/jevents.c
create mode 100755 tools/perf/pmu-events/jevents.py
delete mode 100644 tools/perf/pmu-events/jsmn.h
delete mode 100644 tools/perf/pmu-events/json.c
delete mode 100644 tools/perf/pmu-events/json.h

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2.36.0.512.ge40c2bad7a-goog