Re: addr2line performance

[Namhyung Kim <namhyung@kernel.org>]

Hello,

On Wed, Oct 22, 2025 at 11:30:21AM -0700, Tony Jones wrote:
> Hi.
> 
> https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=218996#c1 mentions
> "there are proposals to move this logic to being from a library again. 
> I think the addr2line processing attempted is valiant but ultimately 
> using a library will be best" (this was when LLVM addr2line support 
> was already present),
> 
> Obviously the test patch mentioned in the above bug doesn't address 
> the underlying performance issue, only better classifying a timeout 
> error.
> 
> We have a customer bug complaining about the performance of addr2line.
> I'm seeing cases where it's taking over 20 seconds wall clock to 
> resolve certain addresses which obviously causes the io_timer to trip 
> but the performance of the success path isn't great either.
> 
> Obviously BFD isn't an option and (for various reasons) we can't use 
> LLVM for this specific distro so I'm looking at the performance
> of addr2line.
> 
> Can someone point me to the prior "using a library" discussion 
> referenced in the above bug or whatever the current thinking is.  I 
> couldn't find anything searching the archive.

I think we can just use libdw.  I tried it in the past but never
finished. :(

Thanks,
Namhyung