Re: [PATCH 3/3] perf events: add timehist option to record and report

On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 06:30:15PM -0200, Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo wrote:

Em Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 08:29:56PM +0100, Frederic Weisbecker escreveu:

quoted

On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 04:41:19PM -0200, Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo wrote:

quoted

Em Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 06:59:30PM +0100, Frederic Weisbecker escreveu:

quoted

The timestamps will be the cpu time and not the walltime, but at least that seems
to be partly what you seek?

The whole issue for him, AFAIK, is to correlate perf events with app
events.

Think about tcpdump + networking tracepoints or 'perf probe' dynamic
events in the network stack, he wants to merge those logs and correlate
the tcpdump packet exchange with the tracepoints events in the network
stack, etc.

I.e. it doesn't matter if it is ftrace or not, having a common clock
shared between apps and kernel tracing/whatever infrastructure is what
David is after, right?

He can change userspace to use the clock the kernel is using in the
perf/ftrace/whatever infrastructure or make the kernel use the clock
userspace uses.

The issue here is who will bend, u or k ;-)

Right. I don't disagree with the need of a walltime. That already
in debate :)

I was rather arguing about the tracing part. Adding support in perf report
in the wrong way to do this. If something must be extended, It should be done
in perf script, where we do the tracing support.

Squashing "profiling" and "tracing" differences is something I think
worthy.

Its all about events, that should be treated as equal in all tools. So I
don't think 'perf script' is about tracing, its about handling events
found in the event stream, be it hw, sw, tracepoints, dynamic probes put
in place by 'perf probe', or whatever event source we end up having.

A 'clock_gettime' like event, sampling whatever POSIX clock the kernel
supports should be enough flexibility, leaving concerns about sanity of
any particular use to the rope user.

Of course, extensibility via 'perf script' or 'use perf' in perf scripts
should provide great avenues for experimentation, not requiring changes
in the builtins :-)

Right.

So I agree perf script should be tracing/profiling/any semantic agnostic.
But when it's about dumping, displaying events sequentially, it seems
an extension to perf script is a better place for that rather than
perf report. perf script default behaviour is already about displaying
raw traces. If support is needed to print the ip of the event or the
stacktraces, it's very welcome!