Re: Meeting minutes 20060727

["Jose R. Santos" <jrs at us dot ibm dot com>]

Tim Bird wrote:
> Sorry for the late response.  I agree that LKST has some good
> post-processing programs.
>
> What do you propose to standardize between LKET and LKST?
> And what is the nature of the standardization?  (That is,
> what are you defining, and how would it be defined so that
> it would be re-usable between projects?)
>   

I think a good start would be for LKET to provide the same information 
that LKST provides with their hooks in order for their post-processing 
scripts to work with LKET.  The format does not have to be the same.  We 
could either get a converter program that transforms the LKET format 
over the something compatible with LKST or make LKST understand the LKET 
format.  As long as we can extract the same information with both tool, 
this should work.
> I think Hiramatsu-san said something about porting LKST
> probe points to SystemTap.  You mention the LKST post-processing
> tools.  I'm wondering how other projects can get involved in
> this standardization, if possible.
>   

Last time I talked with Hiramatsu-san he needed some approval in order 
to release the LKST source code.  I believe he is still working on it.  
One of the things that set LKET apart from LKST (and LTTng for that 
matter) is that the trace points are design to be modifiable so that the 
analysis is not limited by the tool.  Last time I check, LKST's format 
was a bit more restrictive in order to not compromise speed. Their are 
many advantages to all the different method for doing traces (the ones I 
am most familiar are with LKET, LKST and LTTng), but in my opinion, the 
real value of trace tools is not the trace mechanism it self but rather 
the post-processing capabilities than can be archived with the trace 
data.  I believe the best way to reach standardization between all the 
trace tools available is for all the tools to have a standard set of 
trace hooks.  This way we could allow all the post-processing tools to 
be usable between different trace utilities.


-JRS