Re: [RFC] [Patch 0/8] statistics infrastructure

[fche@redhat.com (Frank Ch. Eigler)]

Martin Peschke <mp3@de.ibm.com> writes:

> My patch series is a proposal for a generic implementation of statistics.
> Envisioned exploiters include device drivers, and any other component.
> [...]
> Good places to start reading code are:
>    statistic_create(), statistic_remove()
>    statistic_add(), statistic_inc()
> [...]

It is interesting how many solutions pop up for this sort of problem.
The many tracing tools/patches, systemtap, and now this, all share
some goals and should ideally share some of the technology.

In particular, one of the common points is the designation of points
where significant events take place, and passing their parameters.  In
your case, these are the statitistic_add/inc() calls.  In LTT, these
are macros or inline functions expanding to tracing calls.  In
systemtap, ignoring the slower dynamic kprobes, we now have prototype
support for "markers" are generic statically placed hooks that may be
bound to arbitrary instrumentation code.  (I will be talking more
about this at OLS.)
<http://sourceware.org/ml/systemtap/2006-q1/msg00901.html>

It would be nice if we found a way to agree on one single hooking
mechanism, one that could be accepted here upstream, and used by all
these various projects for their own tracing, probing, or
statistics-collecting backends.

- FChE