[PATCH v1 0/12] perf coverage: A harness for perf, and the fixes it found
From: Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo
Date: Fri Nov 13 2026 - 15:55:51 EST
From: Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme@xxxxxxxxxx>
Hi,
Please consider merging,
Nothing measured how much of perf the test suite reaches. Patch 1 adds
tools/perf/scripts/coverage.sh: it builds perf with clang source based
coverage, runs the complete perf test suite and reports line and function
coverage, optionally against a baseline, with --table and --html like
pahole's coverage_table.py. Also as 'make -C tools/perf coverage',
'coverage-prep' and 'coverage-table'.
The rest is what the first runs found, in the code, the build and the
tests:
- clang DWARF 5 describes globals with DW_OP_addrx, which was not
resolved (patch 2).
- The flexible array member had no test; one showed the struct row at
0.00% while the member said 100.00% (patches 3-4).
- A struct pointer that -O2 keeps in a register was not resolved from
its DWARF location (patch 5).
- --insn-stat was printed before the loop that accounts the samples,
so --code-with-type showed zeros (patch 6).
- The libbfd probe printed a missing bfd.h error five times per
build-test run (patch 7).
- FEATURE-DUMP didn't record llvm-perf and rust, disabling both in the
build-test builds (patch 8).
- GCC 16 caught an uninitialized T32 instruction buffer read in cs-etm
(patch 9).
- The Intel PT virtual LBR check lost every aux sample with a single
data page (patch 10).
- The dlfilter test kept samples whose IP the kernel now zeroes on a
userspace-to-kernel skid (patch 11).
- The LBR inline unwinding check failed instead of skipping when the
AMD PMU rejects branch sampling (patch 12).
In a root run on this box the suite covered 49.16% of perf's 201,180
lines; three tests failed in code this series does not change (the
POLL_HUP tracepoint regression, the AMD BRS branch sampling rejection
and the lock contention count).
The harness and the tests were developed with an AI coding assistant
(OpenCode), which drafted the script and the tests and helped debug the
failures; I reviewed every change and reproduced each failure before
fixing it.
Best regards,
- Arnaldo
Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo (12):
perf scripts: Add a coverage harness for perf
perf annotate-data: Resolve DW_OP_addrx global variables
perf tests: Exercise the flexible array member path
perf annotate-data: Count flexible array accesses for the whole struct
perf tests: Exercise data type resolution from a register
perf annotate: Print the stats after the annotations
perf tests: Silence the libbfd probe in build-test
perf build: Record the display-only features in FEATURE-DUMP
perf cs-etm: Fall back to the recorded instruction size on a failed read
perf tests: Fix the Intel PT virtual LBR check
perf test: Drop samples without an IP in the dlfilter test
perf test: Skip the LBR inline unwinding check when unsupported
tools/perf/.gitignore | 1 +
tools/perf/Makefile | 11 +-
tools/perf/Makefile.config | 4 +
tools/perf/Makefile.perf | 4 +
tools/perf/builtin-annotate.c | 10 +-
tools/perf/scripts/coverage.sh | 703 ++++++++++++++++++
tools/perf/tests/make | 2 +-
tools/perf/tests/shell/addr2line_inlines.sh | 9 +-
tools/perf/tests/shell/annotate_stats.sh | 58 ++
.../perf/tests/shell/data_type_flex_array.sh | 142 ++++
.../tests/shell/data_type_profiling_clang.sh | 108 +++
tools/perf/tests/shell/data_type_register.sh | 120 +++
tools/perf/tests/shell/script_dlfilter.sh | 2 +-
tools/perf/tests/shell/test_intel_pt.sh | 9 +-
tools/perf/util/annotate-data.c | 24 +-
tools/perf/util/cs-etm.c | 7 +-
tools/perf/util/dwarf-aux.c | 42 +-
17 files changed, 1234 insertions(+), 22 deletions(-)
create mode 100755 tools/perf/scripts/coverage.sh
create mode 100755 tools/perf/tests/shell/annotate_stats.sh
create mode 100755 tools/perf/tests/shell/data_type_flex_array.sh
create mode 100755 tools/perf/tests/shell/data_type_profiling_clang.sh
create mode 100755 tools/perf/tests/shell/data_type_register.sh
base-commit: cc905a18a647a8e3ad42cd1596baa0e08fba26eb
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2.56.0