Re: [PATCH -v4 9/9] tracing: add function graph tracer support for MIPS

[Wu Zhangjin <wuzhangjin@gmail.com>]

On Sun, 2009-10-25 at 14:37 +0100, Patrik Kluba wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 25, 2009 at 11:48 AM, Wu Zhangjin <wuzhangjin@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > do you mean if enabling PROFILE_BEFORE_PROLOGUE, there will be some
> > problems with module support using -mlong-calls?
> >
> 
> No, there are no problems. I've tested it on friday, and function
> graph tracing was working correctly.
> I meant to say that 4.2.1 we use does not generate correct profile
> calls from kernel modules. Maybe this issue was fixed in newer
> releases, I did not check. I've applied a patch (don't remember where
> have I found that, maybe it was created by you) to our toolchain
> several months ago.

I have never sent a patch to gcc before :-) but perhaps somebody have
fixed it for us. so, the left job is hoping somebody enable
PROFILE_BEFORE_PROLOGUE for MIPS in the next version of gcc if there is
no side effect, and then we can hijack the return address of non-leaf &
leaf function directly in the same way in _mcount.

> 
> I was thinking about dynamic tracing, and I think a toolchain patch
> can be avoided completely. We only need to make difference between
> "jal _mcount" and "jalr v1"-style mcount calls when replacing them
> with "nop" instructions in the code-patching function called by
> ftrace_convert_nops(). This can be done in 2 ways:
> 1) keeping old instructions - takes extra memory, not an option
> 2) using 2 separate instructions to replace with. One of them could be
> the normal NOP instruction, which expands to "sll r0, r0, 0". For the
> other we could use "sll r0, r0, 1" but as it has already special
> meaning (SSNOP) a better candidate could be something like "sll r1,
> r1, 0". This way we can decide which instruction to patch in when
> tracing is enabled for a function, eg. when the code patcher
> encounters a "sll r0, r0, 0" it emits a function call using JAL and
> when it encounters "sll r1, r1, 0" it emits a function call using
> "JALR v1".

If only thinking about dynamic tracing, no patch for gcc needed,
-mlong-calls is enough, I have done it via a "stupid" trick, will send
the patchset out asap :-)

Regards,
	Wu Zhangjin