off-box analysis of perf.data file

["David S. Ahern" <daahern@cisco.com>]

I'm trying to understand how the latest perf tools are designed with
respect to off-line analysis.

Specifically, I have a system running binaries and libraries that are
stripped and no vmlinux is installed. For analysis, I have a local tree
based on software versions with full debug symbols. Events are collected
into a perf.data file and the file is pushed off-box for analysis.

Without assuming write access to local tree or even ownership of the
perf.data I imagine running a command something like:

perf report -fi /path/to/perf.data \
    --rootfs /path/to/symboled-tree \
    --kallsyms /path/to/kallsyms
    ...

where /proc/kallsyms is dumped for the running system and retrieved
along with the perf.data file.

I've been reading the source and can't say I follow all of the build-id
stuff. Before I spend time working on code modifications I wanted to
better understand the expectations and options for the latest code.

Thanks,

David