[RFC PATCH tracing/kprobes 0/5] tracing/kprobes, perf: perf kprobe support

Ingo Molnar mingo@elte.hu
Wed Sep 30 12:04:00 GMT 2009


* Masami Hiramatsu <mhiramat@redhat.com> wrote:

> Masami Hiramatsu wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> These patches introduce perf kprobe command and update kprobe-tracer.
>> perf kprobe command allows you to add new probe points by C line number
>> and local variable names.
>
> Last week, Arnaldo and I talked about this command, and he suggested 
> that the command would be better 'perf probe', because it would be 
> able to cover both of kernel space (by kprobes) and user space (by 
> uprobes).

Agreed.

> Basically, I agree with his idea. But I think we may need to consider 
> more flexible syntax for that purpose before we support uprobes. In 
> this area, SystemTap has done big advance, we can see how many 
> varieties of syntax it has by 'man stapprobes'.
>
> And also, it's hard to decide it without real uprobe-tracer (and 
> uprobes too!) implementation on ftrace. So, I think it is better to 
> continue using 'perf kprobe' in this time.
>
> But it's worth to add to todo list. :)

I'd still name it 'perf probe', even if initially it supports kprobes.

	Ingo



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