Re: [PATCH v4 3/9] bpf/btf: Add a function to search a member of a struct/union

[Alexei Starovoitov]

On Tue, Aug 1, 2023 at 8:18 AM Masami Hiramatsu <mhiramat@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 31 Jul 2023 19:24:25 -0700
> Alexei Starovoitov <alexei.starovoitov@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > On Mon, Jul 31, 2023 at 6:15 PM Steven Rostedt <rostedt@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > >
> > > On Mon, 31 Jul 2023 14:59:47 -0700
> > > Alexei Starovoitov <alexei.starovoitov@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > >
> > > > Assuming that is addressed. How do we merge the series?
> > > > The first 3 patches have serious conflicts with bpf trees.
> > > >
> > > > Maybe send the first 3 with extra selftest for above recursion
> > > > targeting bpf-next then we can have a merge commit that Steven can pull
> > > > into tracing?
> > >
> > > Would it be possible to do this by basing it off of one of Linus's tags,
> > > and doing the merge and conflict resolution in your tree before it gets to
> > > Linus?
> > >
> > > That way we can pull in that clean branch without having to pull in
> > > anything else from BPF. I believe Linus prefers this over having tracing
> > > having extra changes from BPF that are not yet in his tree. We only need
> > > these particular changes, we shouldn't be pulling in anything specific for
> > > BPF, as I believe that will cause issues on Linus's side.
> >
> > We can try, but I suspect git tricks won't do it.
> > Masami's changes depend on patches for kernel/bpf/btf.c that
> > are already in bpf-next, so git would have to follow all commits
> > that touch this file.
>
> This point is strange. I'm working on probe/fixes which is based on
> v6.5-rc3, so any bpf-next change should not be involved. Can you recheck
> this point?
>
> > I don't think git is smart enough to
> > thread the needle and split the commit into files. If one commit touches
> > btf.c and something else that whole commit becomes a dependency
> > that pulls another commit with all files touched by
> > the previous commit and so on.
>
> As far as I understand Steve's method, we will have an intermediate branch
> on bpf or probe tree, like
>
> linus(some common commit) ---- probes/btf-find-api
>
> and merge it to both bpf-next and probes/for-next branch
>
>           +----------------------bpf-next --- (merge bpf patches)
>          /                       / merge
> common -/\ probes/btf-find-api -/-\
>           \                        \ merge
>            +----------------------probes/for-next --- (merge probe patches)
>
> Thus, we can merge both for-next branches at next merge window without
> any issue. (But, yes, this is not simple, and needs maxium care)

Sounds like the path of least resistance is to keep the changes
in kernel/trace and consolidate with kernel/bpf/btf.c after the next
merge window.